Cockpit Design Research Articles

Simulation framework and development of the Future Systems Simulator

Abstract The Aerospace Integration Research Centre (AIRC) at Cranfield University offers industry and academia an open environment to explore the opportunities for efficient integration of aircraft systems. As a part of the centre, Cranfield University, Rolls-Royce, and DCA Design International jointly have developed the Future Systems Simulator (FSS) for the purpose of research and development in areas such as human factors in aviation, single-pilot operations, future cockpit design, aircraft electrification, and alternative control approaches. Utilising the state-of-the-art modularity principles in simulation technology, the FSS is built to simulate a diverse range of current and novel aircraft, enabling researchers and industry partners to conduct experiments rapidly and efficiently. Central to the requirement, a unique, user-experience-centred development and design process is implemented for the development of the FSS. This paper presents the development process of such a flight simulator with an innovative flight deck. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates the FSS’s capabilities through case studies. The cutting-edge versatility and flexibility of the FSS are demonstrated through the diverse example research case studies. In the final section, the authors provide guidance for the development of an engineering flight simulator based on lessons learned in this project.

Exploring the Human-Centric Interaction Paradigm: Augmented Reality-Assisted Head-Up Display Design for Collaborative Human-Machine Interface in Cockpit

Human-cybernetic interfaces (HCI) focuses on the integration and synergy of human-centric design, human factors (HFs) and economics, and human–machine interaction (HMI). The scrutiny of single pilot operations (SPO) approval from civil aviation authorities (CAAs) is subject to the aviation safety and pilot capability during exceptional handling and flight emergency. Airliners advocate the possibility from dual pilot operations (DPO) to SPO because of the financial considerations and captain shortage in the post-pandemic era. One could expect that SPO can only realise when reduced crew operations initiative is proven to be safe and airworthy. Public concerns pilot mental workload and potentially low situational awareness (SA) when handling overwhelmed multi-source information from the HMI in a cockpit, leading to degraded skills and flying performance. Advanced head up display (HUD) design, an integrated transparent display, can assist pilots in maintaining their optimal performance when SPO exercised. In this study, we are interested to design a SPO-favoured cockpit design with HUD and investigate the potential of integrating augmented reality (AR) and HUD in SPO in flight operations. An experiment involving 21 pilots was conducted to assess the effectiveness of AR-HUD on SA and workload in DPO, SPO, and SPO with AR-HUD scenarios. The Situation Awareness Present Assessment Method (SPAM) and a self-rated workload scale were used to evaluate SA and workload levels. Eye-tracking data was also collected to analyse behavioural performance. Results indicated that the AR-HUD scenario achieved optimal workload and SA levels and demonstrated superior performance in handling emergencies. Eye-tracking data revealed that AR-HUD facilitated a more equitable distribution of gaze between instruments and external view. In conclusion, the integration of AR in cockpit design introduces a human-centric interaction paradigm, contributing to aviation safety, SPO implementation and adaptive HMI design.

Investigating emotional design of the intelligent cockpit based on visual sequence data and improved LSTM

To enhance affective experience and customer satisfaction in the intelligent cockpit of new energy vehicle (NEV-IC), this article proposes a novel method that combines the visual sequence data of eye movements with the sentiment prediction using improved Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). Specifically, we used eye-tracking technology to capture users' visual sequence of design morphology for NEV-IC. We then adopted entropy-TOPSIS to compute the ranking of morphological components based on experts’ opinions, establishing the coupling between users' visual perception and experts' opinion to obtain the key morphological dataset of NEV-IC based on user visual sequence. To tackle the shortcomings of LSTM, meanwhile, we employed the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) to optimize the hyperparameters of the LSTM model. Moreover, an attention mechanism has been introduced to address LSTM's difficulty in preserving key information when processing the sequential data, enabling a stronger focus on critical sequential features within the user's visual path. To assess the efficacy of the proposed SSA-LSTM-Attention model, a dataset incorporating user emotional imagery was constructed, within the research framework of Kansei engineering (KE). This dataset, in conjunction with the morphological dataset of visual sequential features, was applied to our model. The study results indicated that compared to traditional machine learning models like BP neural network (BPNN), support vector regression (SVR), and LSTM, our model performed better in capturing the nonlinear relationship between user sentiment and design features. Additionally, it exhibited higher predictive accuracy, better generalization ability and stronger robustness.

Current study on interaction design in automotive intelligent cockpit

In recent years, with the rapid development of Internet communication digital technology represented by artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, big data, the human-computer interaction of automobiles has also been further developed, showing a new look. As the main part of automotive interaction design, the digital, intelligent and Internet-oriented characteristics of intelligent cockpit are becoming increasingly obvious, especially in recent years, the intelligent cockpit design of new energy vehicles has broken the traditional interaction mode of automobile cockpit in the era of industrial machinery, and more intelligent and immersive interaction design is adopted. And the cockpit of the car not only has a single function for driving, but also provides a space for leisure and entertainment for the driver. Key technologies and design cases of cockpits and its interaction design were sorted out and summarized, and then the problems that cockpits interaction design faces and its future development were analyzed in this paper.

The Application Value of Human-Vehicle Interaction Theory in Intelligent Cockpit Design

With the rapid development of intelligent cockpit, the frontier research of human-vehicle interaction issues has gradually become the focus of the automobile industry. This paper introduces the development history of intelligent cockpit and its design principles and outlook also be proposed. Given the crucial role of multimodal interaction on the intelligent cockpit usability, its definition, common forms, challenges and solutions are introduced and discussed. Four conclusions are drawn from this paper. First of all, the intelligent cockpit design is combined with artificial intelligence technology to improve the convenience and safety of driving. Secondly, the multi-modal interaction provides drivers with a more natural and intuitive interaction mode, and increases the fun of driving. Moreover, the emotional design makes the car not only a means of transportation, but also a kind of emotional sustenance, which meets the emotional needs of users. Finally, the personalized experience allows users to customize the various functions of the car according to their own preferences and habits, which improves the driving comfort. These cutting-edge research not only promotes the technological progress of the automotive industry, but also provides new ideas and directions for the future automotive design.

Piloted Simulation-Based Assessment of Simplified Vehicle Operations for Urban Air Mobility

This work investigates the simplified vehicle operations paradigm, which seeks significant reductions in pilot workload and training requirements through the holistic design of flight control laws, control inceptors, and cockpit displays in the context of vertical takeoff and landing urban air mobility aircraft using piloted flight simulations. Two inceptor layouts, one similar to conventional fixed-wing aircraft and the other similar to conventional rotorcraft, differing in inceptor-to-command mappings, were incorporated into two research flight simulators. A lift-plus-cruise aircraft simulation model, a total energy control system–based fly-by-wire flight control architecture, and identical cockpit displays were used for both setups. Twenty-one participants, divided into three groups based on their prior piloting experience, were used to study pilot performance using representative handling qualities task elements. The piloted simulation data revealed that participants in each group were able to successfully perform the simulation tasks and allowed handling quality ratings to be calculated. They also highlighted instances of control coupling between inceptor axes in each setup for different tasks and the relative ease or difficulty of performing each task with the two inceptor designs.

Categorization of Select Cockpit Performance Evaluation Techniques.

INTRODUCTION: The modern aircraft cockpit has evolved into a complex system of systems. Numerous performance evaluation metrics and techniques exist that can measure the effectiveness of cockpit components in terms of how they influence the human operator's ability to perform tasks relevant to mission success. As no prior review of these metrics has been found in the literature, this effort attempts to do so, albeit without applying the metrics to a novel cockpit evaluation.METHODS: These metrics and techniques are discussed and presented in five defined categories as they relate to evaluating cockpit subsystems: ergonomics and anthropometrics; human-computer interaction; data management and presentation; crew resource management and operations; and ingress and egress.DISCUSSION: While this effort is significant and novel, it is not necessarily comprehensive. In conclusion, it is noted that no single holistic quantitative metric to evaluate cockpit design and performance yet exists. Utilizing some of the preexisting metrics presented to develop such a metric would be beneficial in efforts to evaluate aircraft cockpit designs and performance, as well as aiding future cockpit designs.Brighton EM, Klaus DM. Categorization of select cockpit performance evaluation techniques. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2023; 94(9):696-704.

Relationship between Total Flight Hours and Individual Factors with Low Back Pain in Indonesian Military Helicopter Pilots

Introduction: Helicopter pilots are potentially at risk of Low Back Pain (LBP) and are twice as likely as fighter pilots to experience it. Helicopter pilots’ LBP is caused by a combination of risk factors: engine and rotor vibration, ergonomic risks due to cockpit design, static seating position due to operations, and individual factors. These factors are incorporated into cumulative aviation risk exposure, which can be measured by total flight hours. The prevalence of LBP in Caucasians is high, at 50.5%-92%. However, there has not been any research on Indonesian military helicopter pilots who have a different posture from Caucasians.Objective: To determine the prevalence of LBP, to analyze the relationship between total flight hours and individual factors (age, height, BMI, exercise habits, and smoking habits) with LBP in Indonesian military helicopter pilots.Methods: The study was conducted at the Indonesian Army and Indonesian Air Force with total sampling method as many as 124 people. An explanation was carried out followed by filling in the consent to become a research subject, filling in personal data, anamnesis, Numeric Rating Scale (NRS), physical examination, neurological examination, and total flight hour data.Results: There were 124 subjects, consisting of 37.9% pilots and 62.1% copilots, 87.9% of pilots operate large helicopters, have average total flight hours of 450 hours, age of 30 years, the height of 172.66 cm, low intensity exercise habits of 61.3%, and smokers as much as 45.2%. A total of 57 people (46%) experienced LBP. Statistical results showed that total flight hours had an association with LBP (p = 0.035) where each 1 unit increase in total flight hours had a 1.02 times greater chance of LBP.Conclusion: The prevalence of LBP is 46% and there is an association between total flying hours and LBP in Indonesian military helicopter pilots.

50‐1: Full area local dimming switchable privacy solution with color compensation

Multi display cockpit designs are increasingly popular and aim to provide the content not only to the driver, but also the co‐driver (front seat passenger). This poses a potential safety risk of driver distraction by some content intended for co‐driver entertainment. One potential solution to address it, is switchable (active) privacy allowing to control the display viewing modes.

Inhomogeneous airflow and heat transfer characteristics of buoyancy-driven airflow in aircraft cockpits

ABSTRACT In-flight airflow and temperature distributions are key parameters for the thermal design of aircraft cockpit. In real working conditions, the effect of gravitational acceleration on flow and heat transfer characteristics is crucial but has long been ignored in the cockpit study. Gravitational acceleration also induces buoyant force and inhomogeneous thermal transport, which gives rise to thermal challenges of aircraft cockpit. To address this challenge, an SST k-ω turbulence model was well validated with 94% prediction accuracy to evaluate the inhomogeneous characteristics. The results indicated that the buoyancy-driven temperature distribution became progressively more inhomogeneous as gravitational acceleration increased. It was also found that the nonlinear variations in temperature were observed in the vertical direction from 0 to 1.5 m. Besides, a dimensionless parameter Gr* (∝107) was used to quantitatively assess the buoyant force. The results showed that the buoyancy force was considerably similar at 2.0 g and 4.0 g, and largely different from the trend at 1.0 g. Indeed, a common characteristic of these three conditions is the presence of a large inhomogeneity coefficient R in the top region of the cockpit. Therefore, an important limitation when designing the thermal structure of cockpit is the inhomogeneous feature of which the follow-up study needs to be carried out.

The effect of flight phase on electrodermal activity and gaze behavior: A simulator study

Current advances in airplane cockpit design and layout are often driven by a need to improve the pilot's awareness of the aircraft's state. This involves an improvement in the flow of information from aircraft to pilot. However, providing the aircraft with information on the pilot's state remains an open challenge. This work takes a first step towards determining the pilot's state based on biosensor data. We conducted a simulator study to record participants' electrodermal activity and gaze behavior, indicating pilot state changes during three distinct flight phases in an instrument failure scenario. The results show a significant difference in these psychophysiological measures between a phase of regular flight, the incident phase, and a phase with an additional troubleshooting task after the failure. The differences in the observed measures suggest great potential for a pilot-aware cockpit that can provide assistance based on the sensed pilot state.

Development of a quantitative measurement on visual clutter in see through display.

With the wide use of transmission displays to improve operation performance, the display information highlights clutter because of the contradiction between the massive amount of information and limited display area. Our study aimed to develop a quantitative measurement for declutter design and appraisal. Using the ergonomics research system of characters and symbols in a see-through cockpit display, we set the simulated flight task interface at four pixel scale levels by enlarging all the display elements in a certain ratio. Flight task videos of 12 clutter degrees were recorded using each flight interface matched with three flight scene complexity levels. A total of 60 pilots completed the visual search tasks in the flight task video while the eye tracker was used to record the view path in real time. Visual search performance was analyzed to study the effect of various clutter factors and levels on pilots' performance in visual search tasks, and acquire quantitative clutter measure parameters. GLM univariate test revealed that there were significant differences among the fixation time in areas of interest (AOI), total Fixation point number, total fixation time at four pixel scale levels, and three flight scene complexity levels (P < 0.05). Visual search performance declined after the cutoff point, while the clutter degree increased. According to the visual search performance data, the recommend feature congestion upper pixel number limit in a 600*800 display was 18,576, and the pixel ratio was 3.87%. A quantitative measurement for declutter design and appraisal of cockpit displays was developed, which can be used to support see-through display design.

Alert! The Appearance of Moded Input Devices in the Modern Airliner Cockpit

The automation in the flight deck of a modern airliner has grown in functionality over the past several decades, improving safety and operational efficiency. As the sophistication of automation has increased, some traditional input devices in the cockpit, such as throttle levers, yokes, and switches, have unobtrusively changed the way they work. Instead of operating the same way at all times, the behavior of these input devices has become context-sensitive (i.e., “moded”). It is well known in human factors design that nonsalient moded input devices require increased cognitive workload and can result in a startle, surprise, and confusion. An analysis of modern airliner cockpits identified three types of moded input devices: 1) disabled, 2) alternative behavior, and 3) command override. The implications of these results on cockpit design, certification, and flight crew training are discussed.

A comprehensive evaluation model for the intelligent automobile cockpit comfort

Under the background of automobile intelligence, cockpit comfort is receiving increasing attention, and intelligent cockpit comfort evaluation is especially important. To study the intelligent cockpit comfort evaluation model, this paper divides the intelligent cockpit comfort influencing factors into four factors and influencing indices: acoustic environment, optical environment, thermal environment, and human–computer interaction environment. The subjective and objective evaluation methods are used to obtain the subjective weights and objective weights of each index by the analytic hierarchy process and the improved entropy weight method, respectively. On this basis, the weights are combined by using the game theory viewpoint to obtain a comprehensive evaluation model of the intelligent automobile cockpit comfort. Then, the cloud algorithm was used to generate the rank comprehensive cloud model of each index for comparison. The research results found that among the four main factors affecting the intelligent automobile cockpit comfort, human–computer interaction has the greatest impact on it, followed by the thermal environment, acoustic environment, and optical environment. The results of the study can be used in intelligent cockpit design to make intelligent cockpits provide better services for people.

Study on Aircraft Cockpit Function Based on Neural Network

With the rapid development of numerous airlines, various trend designs have been implemented to develop cockpit interiors for pilots. When communicating with most pilots, they express their emotional feelings about the cockpit. The performance-enhanced cockpit provides the pilot with a better emotional experience, further enhancing the comfort and pleasure of driving. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a cockpit with good performance. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel Neural Network-based Balanced Optimization Algorithm (NN-EOA) for cockpit emotion recognition. The proposed NN-EOA technique simulates quantitative computation with high accuracy and minimizes the error rate during evaluation. Here, images of the interior cockpit design were assessed on four emotional terms, namely, user-friendly (interactive), precise (precise), traditional (traditional), and neat (tidy). Finally, experimental results are performed on various parameters, namely, the mean absolute error (MAE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and root mean square error (RMSE) for various techniques. From the experimental evaluations, it can be seen that the proposed NN-EOA provides high agreement rates in the experimental group with the smallest MAE, MAPE, and RMSE.

Dynamic Range of Luminance Perception in Acute Hypobaric Hypoxia.

Rizzi, Alessandro, Alice Plutino, Diego Vecchi, Anton Giulio Guadagno, and Marco Lucertini. Dynamic range of luminance perception in acute hypobaric hypoxia. High Alt Med Biol. 23:313-318, 2022.-The effects of acute hypobaric hypoxia, as potentially experienced in high altitude flight, on the detection of low contrast targets within a high dynamic range (DR) of luminance were investigated. The tests were performed after 10 minutes of adaptation to an ambient luminance level of 0.2 lx. Twenty-four individuals were exposed to hypobaric hypoxia at an altitude of 18,000 ft (5,490 m) inside a hypobaric chamber and were asked to identify the darkest one perceived from a grid of progressively less luminous patches. The results were compared with those obtained by the same subjects at sea level. The results indicate a global reduction of the DR perception during hypoxia, with a mean decrease of 0.023 cd/m2 (standard deviation ±0.064), which resulted statistically significant (p < 0.05). No significant correlations with oxygen saturation levels were observed. These findings might have practical applications in the design of cockpit's instruments, especially those dedicated to night-time flight missions at high altitudes.

An Attentive Blank Stare Under Simulator-induced Spatial Disorientation Events.

This study investigated the effect of the spatial disorientation (SD) events on an attentive blank stare in the cockpit scene and demonstrated how much the flight task and visual delayed discrimination task were competing for the pilots' attention. SD in flight is the leading cause of human error-related aircraft accidents in the military, general and commercial aviation, and has been an unsolved problem since the inception of flight. In-flight safety research, visually scanning cockpit instruments, and detecting changes are critical countermeasures against SD. Thirty male military pilots were performing a dual task involving piloting a flight simulator and visual change detection, while eye movements were obtained using an eye tracker. Pilots made more flight errors and spent less time gazing at the area of change in SD-conflict than in non-conflict flights. The vestibular origin SD-conflict led not only to deteriorated piloting and visual scanning but also to problems coordinating overt and covert attention, resulting in lower noticeability of visual changes despite gazing at them. Our study shows that looking at a given area in space is not a sufficient condition for effective covert attention allocation and the correct response to a visual stimulus. It seems to be important to make pilots aware of this during SD training. To reduce change blindness, some strategies, such as reducing the number of secondary tasks is extremely valuable. Particular efforts should also be focused on improving the design of the aircraft cockpit by increasing the conspicuousness of critical information.

A mixed reality simulation evaluation method for complex system

In order to analyze the proposed method, this paper takes the cockpit as the complex system, since the traditional cockpit design evaluation method can set up an actual engineering prototype. Although this method can realize the accurate evaluation of the internal structure layout, control devices, and interface display of the cockpit, it is difficult to make modifications once the production is completed, which is not suitable for multi-scheme comparison and rapid iteration in the early stage of civil aircraft design. In this regard, this paper establishes the civil aircraft cockpit physical environment and the corresponding virtual cockpit environment based on the virtual-real matching technology, then proposes a mixed reality simulation evaluation method so as to realize the real-time ergonomic evaluation of the digital human body followed by a real person. Experimental results show that this mixed reality simulation evaluation method can effectively improve the evaluation accuracy of cockpit design, ensure the efficiency of multi-scheme comparison and optimization iteration in the early stage of cockpit design.

Evidence for Human-Centric In-Vehicle Lighting: Part 1

Today, up to hundreds of RGB and W-LEDs are positioned in a vehicle’s interior context and are able to be individually controlled in intensity, color and sequence. However, which kind of illumination distracts or supports car occupants and how to define such a modern illumination system is still under discussion and unknown. For that, first a definition for an in-vehicle lighting system is introduced. Second, a globally distributed study was performed based on a free-access online survey to investigate in-vehicle lighting for visual signaling within 10 colors, eight positions and six dynamic patterns. In total, 238 participants from China and Europe rated color preferences, color moods, light-position preferences, differences between manual and autonomous driving and also different meanings for dynamic lighting patterns. Out of these, three strong significant (p &lt; 0.05) color preference groups were identified with a polarized, accepted or merged character. For the important driving-signaling mood attention, we found a significant hue dependency for Europeans which was missing within the Chinese participants. In addition, we identified that light positioned at the door and foot area was globally favored. Furthermore, we evaluated qualitative results: men are primarily focusing on fast-forward, whereas women paid more attention on practical light usage. These findings conclude the need for a higher lighting-car-occupant adaptation in the future grounded by deeper in-vehicle human factors research to achieve a higher satisfaction level. In interdisciplinary terms, our findings might also be helpful for interior building or general modern cockpit designs for trains or airplanes.

A Socio-Technical Simulation Model for the Design of the Future Single Pilot Cockpit: An Opportunity to Improve Pilot Performance

The future deployment of single pilot operations must be supported by new cockpit computer services. Such services require an adaptive context-aware integration of technical functionalities with the concurrent tasks that a pilot must deal with. Advanced artificial intelligence supporting services and improved communication capabilities are the key enabling technologies that will render future cockpits more integrated with the present digitalized air traffic management system. However, an issue in the integration of such technologies is the lack of socio-technical analysis in the design of these teaming mechanisms. A key factor in determining how and when a service support should be provided is the dynamic evolution of pilot workload. This paper investigates how the socio-technical model-based systems engineering approach paves the way for the design of a digital assistant framework by formalizing this workload. The model was validated in an Airbus A-320 cockpit simulator, and the results confirmed the degraded pilot behavioral model and the performance impact according to different contextual flight deck information. This study contributes to practical knowledge for designing human-machine task-sharing systems.