Emerging Trends in Present and Future Aircraft Cockpit Designs: Challenges in Analysis, Design and Evaluation

Abstract

Recent breakthroughs in display and control avionics constitute one of those remarkable technological milestones that from time to time will spur aircraft development and airline operations. Whether in technical areas or operational functions - trade-offs between continuity and progress have steered the design and deployment of the Airbus family of aircraft. In particular, cockpit development has directly proceeded from a permanent process of monitoring new technology availability and problems; and of evaluating how best to improve the pilot’s working environment within realistic airline constraints (economics, maintenance, training, ATC, human resources etc.). The drive of this adaptation and integration process through technology leaps and systems' interfacing ambitionned the eventual inclusion of the human operators in the safety loop, a goal long sought in the profession. While economic effectiveness and industrial feasibility were most important factors to be considered between possible solutions, the safety imperative has always been the prime parameter nonetheless. Some of the emerging operational needs and conceptual orientations related to automation are reviewed in this paper. In direct conjunction with this, Airbus Industrie has conducted an important research programme from the early 1980’s onwards, gradually investigating the ergonomic, physiologic and operational factors affecting flight crew in their working environment, and progressively refining the data acquisition and analysis techniques (Speyer J.-J., Fort A., October 1982) relative to workload measurement.