Rotorcraft Brownout Study

Objective:

The Advanced Rotorcraft Flight Deck project investigates new flight deck display formats to provide rotorcraft pilots with the information they need to successfully operate in challenging environments. The advanced display formats enable greater safety by reducing the incidence of spatial disorientation and controlled flight into terrain (CFIT). The formats increase mission capabilities by enabling pilots to maintain visibility in brown-out, white-out, and other reduced-visibility environments.

Equipment:

Pilots are used to test Synthetic Vision Technology in the Rotorcraft Simulator.

Synthetic Vision Technology

Synthetic vision provides a naturalistic perspective representation of the world using terrain, obstacle, and threat databases. The synthetic display acts as a backup if the environment obscures visibility. A shadow of the aircraft rendered onto the terrain below provides an intuitive estimate of height above terrain and ridgeline clearance.

Z-Axis Symbology

The Z-axis symbology provides pilots with salient information about descent rate, descent acceleration, and height above terrain. The symbology set reduces pilot workload and significantly reduces the incidence of CFIT.

Simulator-Based Testing

An international team of test pilots from military, non-military government, and commercial backgrounds has flown and evaluated the display formats in the OPL rotorcraft simulator.

sponsors and partners

NASA

projects:

Neural Avionics
Rotorcraft Brownout Study
Synthetic Flight Bag (SFB)

Iowa Space Grant Consortium (ISGC)

projects:

Rotorcraft Brownout Study
Synthetic Flight Bag (SFB)