High-Fidelity Line Operational Simulation Evaluation of Synthetic Vision Flight Deck Technology for Enhanced Unusual Attitude Awareness and Recovery

ABSTRACT

A Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) study of 18 LOC-I accidents determined that a lack of external visual references (i.e., darkness, instrument meteorological conditions, or both) was associated with a flight crew’s loss of attitude awareness or energy state awareness in 17 of these events. In response, CAST called for research on Virtual Day-Visual Meteorological Condition (VMC) displays, also known as Synthetic Vision Systems, to accomplish the intended function of improving flight crew awareness of airplane attitude. A NASA high-fidelity simulator research study is described that focused on evaluation of the technology during upset recovery and line operational simulation scenarios with Boeing 787-rated international airline flight crews, which supplements previous studies evaluating the technology with U.S. domestic air transport pilots. The results evinced that synthetic vision systems can significantly enhance recognition of, and prevention of entry into unusual attitudes and aid in recovery especially over high-terrain environments through substantially enhanced attitude and terrain awareness.

Acknowledgment

Special thanks to Boeing for providing the facilities, professional network, management support, and subject matter expertise required to enable this collaborative research. We acknowledge Rockwell Collins for the use of their Pro Line Fusion Synthetic Vision System (SVS), Dave White (L3) and Nigel Wood (L3) for integration of hardware and software, and the international airline (not named to protect anonymity of pilot participants) that provided the flight crews and operations input. We also thank the individuals Tim Etherington (Rockwell Collins), Jim Wilkerson (Boeing), Randy Bailey (NASA), and Jamie Brewer (Boeing) for their subject matter expertise and support. Much appreciation goes to many NASA persons that gave exceptional support for this study. RTCA SC-213 provided significant research direction and played an essential role of establishing global concurrence for the MASPS (DO-371). Finally, a special thanks to all CAST and JIMDAT members for continued support in providing data-driven initiatives to advance technologies designed to mitigate LOC-I accidents in commercial aviation.

Additional information

Funding

The research was conducted under NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s System-Wide Safety (SWS) project within the Airspace Operations and Safety Program supporting strategic thrust one, Safe, Efficient Growth in Global Operations and strategic thrust five, In-Time System-Wide Safety Assurance.

Notes on contributors

Kyle K. Ellis

Kyle Ellis is the Associate Project Manager for NASA’s System-Wide Safety project under the Aviation Operations and Safety Program. He is a subject matter expert in the fields of eye tracking, psychophysiometrics, systems integration, avionics, airspace operations, and safety, statistics, machine learning, autonomous systems, and human-machine interaction.

Lawrence J. Prinzel

Lawrence (Lance) Prinzel is the Senior Technical Advisor for NASA System-System Wide Safety project under the Aviation Operations and Safety Program. As a NASA research aerospace engineer and aerospace psychologist for over 25 years, he conducts research to develop mitigations that address leading worldwide causal factors of commercial aircraft accidents.

Daniel K. Kiggins

Daniel Kiggins is a 35,000 flight-hour airline captain at a major U.S. airline. He has served as a NASA subject matter expert for approximately 20 years on numerous flight and simulation tests conducted on variety of aircraft safety technology mitigations to address causal factors of worldwide commercial aviation accidents.f

Stephanie N. Nicholas

Stephanie Nicholas is a NASA Human Factors Engineer and conducts human-in-the-loop studies, focusing on future flight deck technologies and aerospace human-system integration. She has also investigated systems requirement verification, testing, and evaluation for military helicopters.

Kathryn Ballard

Kathryn Ballard is a NASA statistical engineer and researcher supporting NASA earth science and aviation projects. She specializes in statistical programming, design of experiments, and data visualization.

Renee C. Lake

Renee Lake is a NASA aerospace/biomedical engineer with research interests in commercial aviation technologies, space medicine, aeronautic analytical modeling, structural dynamics, and bio-inspired flight research. She was also a field clinical engineer in the medical device industry prior to joining NASA.

Trey J. Arthur

Trey Arthur has 20 years of experience conducting human-in-the-loop experiments in the Crew Systems and Aviation Operations Branch at NASA Langley Research Center. He serves as principal investigator for human-in-the-loop flight and simulation experiments for design, test, and evaluation of advanced flight deck displays.