CHARLES RIVER ANALYTICS, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N162-094

Description

Spatial perception in the cockpit remains paramount for safe and effective flight. Unfortunately, transitioning from aided to unaided flight has profound effects on pilots accuracy of spatial perception, increasing the cost of effective attention switching and reorientation to key environmental information, particularly an issue with limited visual cues in degraded conditions. Improved displays are required to support accurate perception of township orientation and movement during precision maneuvers. To address these challenges, we will design and demonstrate an Ecological Advanced Support Interface Toolkit for Heads Up Attention to Improve Warfighter Knowledge (EASI-HAWK). EASI-HAWK will enable efficient transition between aided and unaided vision through natural visual and auditory cues that extend beyond the foveal visual system. These cues will enable robust, direct perception and disambiguation of orientation and motion cues critical to maintaining awareness of aircraft and executing effective control responses. EASI-HAWK will build upon ongoing research efforts and a mature development platform for rapidly prototyping and evaluating novel 5th generation cockpit display strategies to rapidly demonstrate promising display approaches. These prototypes will be used to evaluate EASI-HAWK in supporting pilots. While we will initially target displays for the JSF pilots, component technologies can be rapidly extended and deployed to other aircraft.