Computerized Airborne Research Program

The Computerized Airborne Research Platform (CARP) was designed so that human factors could be studied along with advanced flight deck technology. The airplane is a Beech A-36 Bonanza, and it is equipped with sophisticated equipment that was designed at OPL. The equipment is loaded onto the plane by being placed on a rack. It contains a Dopplershift Novatel GPS with Omnistar correction for location data and also houses computers that can be set up to record video data for eye tracking. The equipment rack was designed so that the Flight Test Engineer can still sit in the airplane and monitor data acquisition. This makes it easier for data to be gathered for our neural avionics and eye tracking studies. The CARP has also been equipped with our synthetic vision system. The Synthetic Flight Bag (SFB) can be installed and removed in a very short amount of time. It has been designed so that it sits directly in front of the pilot. The CARP is a highly specialized plane that we can use for a wide variety of studies.

The Flight Deck in the CARP

Photos

Computerized Airborne Research Platform (CARP), Beech A-36 Bonanza

The CARP was procured with funds from CCAD to perform airborne human factors research of advanced flight deck technology.