SA PHOTONICS, LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: ABSTRACT: How pilots interact visually with aircraft has changed dramatically over the la

Description

ABSTRACT: How pilots interact visually with aircraft has changed dramatically over the last 60 years. Pilots have reconfigurable head down displays with multiple configurations, heads up displays displaying both imagery and symbology and head mounted displays displaying a plethora of information, in addition to the pilot having many more"out the window"tasks. Along with the increased complexity of the visual environment comes an increased complexity of discerning where the pilot is looking and how effective they are using these visual cues, in both simulation and operational environments. Without an accurate, real-time measure of where a pilot is directing his or her attention, it is almost impossible to infer what information they are attending/not attending to. SA Photonics has developed an approach to inferring where a pilot is looking and what they are attending to while using an HMD. Our approach captures the critical data without burdening the operator and the simulator environment with extraneous hardware of marginal value. We exploit available data signals, and our solution provides a deep grounding in the human factors of the operator"s interaction with HMD data and resulting actions. BENEFIT: The benefits of a performance and training assessment tool for use with an HMD include being able to understand what is working and what isn"t with respect to training pilots for using HMDs. In addition, individual pilot performance can be optimized by reinforcing concepts and tactics that they are having particular problems with. Our HMD-based measurement system will also be useful in operational cockpits for sensing pilot performance, including work overload, sleepiness, and hypoxia onset. Commercial benefits of our system include training commercial helicopter pilots in night vision goggle use, as there is an unacceptably high fatality rate for commercial helicopters flying at night.