The Effect of Clutter and Lowlighting Symbology on Pilot Performance with Head-Up Displays

Abstract

The problems of focusing attention while using head-up displays has been noted in the literature. To examine the issue, twenty-four instrument-rated pilots from the University of Illinois flew a high-fidelity simulator during cruise flight using head-up and head-down displays. The pilots were presented with either a symbology set with the bare essentials to fly the simulation or an enhanced set of information. The intensity of the display symbology was manipulated, including a condition lowlighting non-essential flight task information. Flying with a HUD in good weather conditions provided a clear advantage to tracking performance and event detection over the head-down conditions. This result was found presumably through the extraction of attitude information from the two domains, the near symbology and the far horizon. Clutter was found to slow the detection of changes on the symbology and detection of targets in the environment. However, lowlighting the non-essential information begins to ameliorate this problem. The appropriate combination of location, intensity, and contrast modulated visual attention between the symbology and the environment and produced a win-win situation for HUDs.