Primary Flight
Display
This research project was conducted in tandem with Dr. Axel Roesler of UW and Boeing, in collaboration with Sarah Churng. The project was to explore a human-centered proof of concept interface for commercial aircraft primary flight displays (PFD) to reduce cognitive overload in high-risk situations. Our case study was based around the events of Air France Flight 447 and the relationship between human error and machine malfunction.
Primary Flight Display
This research project was conducted in tandem with Dr. Axel Roesler of UW and Boeing, in collaboration with Sarah Churng. The project was to explore a human-centered proof of concept interface for commercial aircraft primary flight displays (PFD) to reduce cognitive overload in high-risk situations. Our case study was based around the events of Air France Flight 447 and the relationship between human error and machine malfunction.
PROJECT
University
YEAR
2014
ROLE
Research, Design
PRINCIPLE RESEARCHER
Dr. Axel Roesler
Grasping the world from a cockpit: perspectives on embodied neural mechanisms underlying human performance and ergonomics in aviation context
Current
PFD
The primary flight display is one of the core interfaces in communicating aircraft positioning to the pilot. Currently it is two dimentional visualizes horizon line information but lacks comprehensive contextual information such as angle-of-attack. Traditional PFD displays have been minimally updated since the 1980’s when they became a standard across commercial airplanes. As technology and plane automation has advanced many of the interfaces to communicate flight status to the pilot have not evolved.
Air France
Flight 447
In the aftermath of high risk situations that have resulted in disastrous outcomes, a common debate arises: human error or design flaw? On June 1, 2009 Air France flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean as a result of unclear information from the instruments creating a negative feedback loop resulting in human error.
After the aircraft speed sensors failed, setting off stall alarms and disengaging autopilot, the junior pilot acted as trained and pulled back on the flight stick to gain stability. What he did not realize is that by doing so he forced the plane into a stall resulting in a crash within 4 minutes. The lack of actionable feedback, absence of comprehensive contextual information, and the nature of flight stick independent operation, the senior pilot had no way of knowing what was happening. These compounding situations lead to confusion and ultimately deadly failure.
Proposed
PFD
This proof of concept primary flight display eliminates cognitive delays in high-risk situations and provides pilots with direct visual affordances about the flight path. The design takes a human-centered approach to create a model that facilitates direct perceptions of plane orientation. By creating an immersive visual environment we aimed to tap into the reflex that corrects the body into alignment when it is off balance, so that controlling the plane becomes an extension of the pilot’s ‘righting reflex’ (Kathleen Cullen).
Our work was motivated by insights from cognitive psychology and neuropsychology. We use the edges of the interface itself as visual affordances to indicate contextual changes and we simulate the righting reflex to prompt pilots to correctly engage downward velocity and reenter the target flight path. Instead of feedback that requires cognitive functions, which take up critical time, the proposed concept implements perceptual cues that engage the pilots to take immediate action. The target flight path is represented by the immersive tunnel and yellow target indicator, with the planes real time positioning indicated in blue, when aligned and on path creating a green indication.
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