Graphical Interface for Spatial Disorientation Mitigation and Optimization of Situation Awareness (GISMOS)

Rotary wing operations for low-level flight during takeoff and landing are visually dominant, requiring minute, constant, control corrections.  In Degraded Visual Environments (DVE), useful external visual information is reduced or eliminated, making it easier for unreliable vestibular information to adversely influence perception of aircraft state, often leading to spatial disorientation (SD) and accidents. Helicopter avionics insufficiently support maneuvers in DVE. Charles River Analytics proposes to design and demonstrate a Graphical Interface for SD Mitigation and Optimization of Situation Awareness (GISMOS). Our Ecological Interface Design approach, based on a Cognitive Task Analysis, addresses pilots’ perceptual, cognitive, and physical needs, and identifies missing/incorrect cues due to DVE. GISMOS symbologies will substitute necessary cues, such as perspective, depth, and vection, while operators maintain an eyes-out posture. GISMOS will allow pilots to avoid or quickly resolve SD during brownout conditions in a manner that is consistent with how they would operate if they could see visually outside the flight deck, enabling seamless transition between real-world spatial cues and their synthetic display symbology counterparts. Feasible technology is reviewed for implementation of the symbologies developed utilizing a formal test protocol to validate the solution within an ecologically valid context without causing new safety/performance issues.