FACTORS INFLUENCING THE DESIGN OF PERSPECTIVE FLIGHT PATH DISPLAYS FOR GUIDANCE AND NAVIGATION

Many types of modern commercial aircraft are equipped with an Electron ic Flight Instrument System, comprising several programmable displays. The flexibility in information presentation of these systems offers t he possibility to improve the pilot-aircraft interface significantly. Future concepts, such as enhanced and synthetic vision, will further i ncrease these possibilities. To benefit from this, research into new d isplay concepts is being performed to allow the pilot to operate in a four-dimensional (4D) air-traffic environment, to provide improved spa tial and navigational awareness, and to enable a better transition fro m supervisory to manual control. A possible display format is the so-c alled perspective flight path display, which originated approximately 40 years ago. The design of perspective flight path displays for guida nce and short-term navigation requires the specification of several pa rameters. Suitable values for these parameters depend on requirements with respect to range and resolution of the required information, the properties of the positioning and attitude determination system, and t he abilities of the human operator with respect to perception, interpr etation and evaluation of information. In this paper, a review of the various factors to be considered in the design of perspective flight p ath displays is presented. The relations between the guidance/short-te rm navigation task-related requirements and the design parameters of a perspective flight path display are discussed, and the consequences o f the differences between today's guidance displays and perspective fl ight path displays for algorithms controlling the display symbology ar e explained.