Helmet-Mounted Displays: - USAARL - The - U.S. Army

(Quast and Maricello, 1996)
Test and Evaluation 263
Test category Test issues
Photometric, radiometric, colorimetric Luminance, contrast, uniformity, viewing
angle performance, reflectance,
transmittance, color gamut, response,
dimming range
Environmental Temperature, vibration, shock, chemical
exposure, water/salt exposure
Qualitative Readability, legibility, image quality
Mechanical, physical, and electrical Weight, CG, volume, power consumption,
efficiency, heat generation
system and subsystem level), equipment, techniques, and criteria. A
summary of recommended tests are provided in Table 10.3.
In-Flight
Laboratory evaluations, no matter how thorough, can not fully assess
the performance of an HMD system. An in-flight evaluation is required to
assess performance under actual operating conditions. As in the laboratory
evaluation, tests should include operational parameters, potential health
hazards, safety issues, and human factors concerns. A comprehensive inflight
assessment plan, developed specifically for HMDs by the U.S. Army
Aviation Technical Test Center, Fort Rucker, Alabama, is provided in
USAARL Report No. 96-1, “Assessment methodology for integrated
helmet and display systems in rotary-wing aircraft” (Rash et al., 1996).
Comprehensive testing should look at reliability, logistic supportability,
as well as an HHA and SSA, which addresses the identification of potential
health hazards and safety concerns. In addition, HFE problems should be
noted, thereby emphasizing the integration of human performance and
system performance.
Reliability testing provides the opportunity to identify subsystems or
components which exhibit a short mean time between failure (MTBF). The
frequency of failure of specific items allows early estimation of logistical
Table 10.3.
Recommended integrated HMD test parameters.
(Adapted from Rash et al., 1996)