2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

abnormal positions such as spins and acrobatics, and (11) have dependability and incorporate
factors of safety so that should one feature fail, others would suffice for the time.
Ocker and Crane’s list can be extended to: (1) enable pilots to fly as aggressively and as
effectively on instruments as in visual flight conditions, (2) enable instrument group tactics of
manned or unmanned air combat vehicles by allowing each pilot/operator to visualize the others,
(3) adapt to changes in aircraft configuration and environment in order to show real-time aircraft
capability (This is particularly important for tilt-rotor, vectored thrust, or variable geometry craft
with their correspondingly complex flight envelopes.), (4) facilitate instrument hover with
motion parallax cues showing translation, (5) combat spatial disorientation and loss of situational
awareness by provide a visually compelling 360° frame of reference as a true six degrees-offreedom,
directly-perceivable link to the outside world, (6) allow pilots to fly aircraft without
deficit while simultaneously studying a second display, (i.e. radar, FLIR, or map), (7) enable
pilots to control the aircraft even with reduced vision from laser damage or lost glasses, and (8)
be realized with a software change in any aircraft with a glass cockpit.
Conventional flight instrument displays clearly fail to meet these requirements for several
reasons. For example, the pilot must scan the instruments, looking at or near each of a number
of instruments in succession to obtain information. Studies of pilot instrument scanning have
shown that it is not unusual for even trained pilots to spend as much as 0.5 sec viewing a single
instrument and durations of two seconds or more are to be expected even from expert pilots in
routine maneuvers (10, 11, 32). Consequently, the time required to sequentially gather
information can be substantial, severely limiting the pilot’s ability to cope with rapidly changing
or unanticipated situations and emergencies. Furthermore, the pilot must constantly monitor
instruments to ensure that the aircraft is performing as intended because the instruments do not
"grab" the pilot's attention when deviations from prescribed parameters occur.
Another shortcoming is that current flight instrument displays use many different frames
of reference, with information in a variety of units: degrees, knots, feet, rates of change, etc. The
pilot must integrate these different units into a common frame of reference to create an overall
state of situational awareness. Moreover, the basic flight instruments are not integrated with
other cockpit instrumentation such as engine, weather, and radio instruments. The components
of each of these, like the basic flight instruments, have different units and do not share a common
frame of reference. The traditional practical solutions to these problems have been to severely
limit flight procedures, emphasize instrument scan training, and require extensive practice.
The Development of OZ
OZ is a system based on principles of vision science, Human-Centered Computing
(HCC) (12), computer science, and aerodynamics aimed at meeting the requirements of an ideal
cockpit display. OZ, as an example of HCC, is an effective technology that amplifies and
extends the human's perceptual, cognitive, and performance capabilities while at the same time
reducing mental workload. The controlling software (i.e., the calculations ordinarily imposed on
the pilot) runs seamlessly "behind the curtain" but without hiding specific values of important
parameters to which the pilot needs to have access.
Research on vision and cognition suggested ways to eliminate the fundamental speed
barrier of traditional displays, the "instrument scan." The visual field can be divided into two
channels, the focal (closely related to central or foveal vision), and the ambient (closely related
45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003
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