Research Staff: Tony Adami
This excerpt gives an overview of two related on-going projects: the Advanced Display Concepts for NextGen (ADCN) project with the FAA and the Safe Flight Deck Systems (SFDS) project with the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC). Whereas the ADCN project focuses on the identification of gaps in current display technology as used or NextGen applications and addresses solutions to fill these gaps, the SFDS project investigates, develops, and tests new methods for providing pilots with information that improves integrity, avoids information overload, and reduces risk associated with a lack of information in the NextGen complexities. Both projects involve a strong pilot-in-the-loop simulation component.
A simulation environment was created to model aircraft communication, navigation, surveillance, and health reporting systems and sensors, along with their respective error models. An onboard Hazard and Integrity Monitor (HIM) function and an Integrated Alerting and Notification (IAN) function was developed to detect and assess hazards, and issue integrated and prioritized alerts and notifications to the flight crew. The objective of these functions is to mitigate hazards introduced by the operators, the application of automation, and the environment. The simulation environment, HIM and IAN functions are used to interact with an external simulator as well as drive the display concept.
