The Effects of a Brightness-Gradated Attitude Indicator on Situation Awareness in Flight

摘要

In flight environment, the pilot is required to detect and integrate the information gathered from the environment as quickly as possible to improve situation awareness. The safe operation of the aircraft, as one of the pilot's goals, is highly dependent on the current assessment of varying situation. While flying at night, under certain weather conditions, or with aerobatic maneuvers, sensory illusions may occur regardless of the pilot' s experience or proficiency, which leads to a conflict between actual attitude indication and what the pilot perceives it to be. This conflict may again lead to spatial disorientation and loss of aircraft control. In perception of an unusual attitude, the pilot must perform recovery procedures as quickly as possible through properly recognizing the situation and making a correct decision by the attitude indicator. This study investigated the effects of a brightness-gradated attitude indicator against the conventional attitude indicator on flight. For comparing the two types of attitude indicators, the subjects performed unusual attitude recovery procedures in accordance with the attitude of flight presented in a flying simulator to measure the reaction time. After the test runs, the subjects rated two types of attitude indicators for situation awareness using a subjective rating questionnaire. Although the subjects were familiar with the conventional attitude indicator, better performance in recognizing the attitude of flight and performing unusual attitude recovery procedures as well as greater preference were observed from the brightness-gradated attitude indicator over the conventional attitude indicator. The brightness-gradated bands highlighted the direction of the horizon and improved the attitude recognition performance. To improve both situation awareness and aircraft control, understanding of visual information provided by the attitude indicator would be a prerequisite to maintaining safe flight conditions and the results suggested that the use of brightness-gradation for an attitude indicator improves situation awareness in flight environment.