Recent years have seen a rise in the number of air crashes and on board fatalities. Statistics reveal that human error constitutes upto 56% of these incidents. This can be attributed to the ever growing air traffic and technological advancements in the field of aviation, leading to an increase in the electronic and mechanical controls in the cockpit. Accidents occur when pilots misinterpret gauges, weather conditions, fail to spot mechanical faults or carry out inappropriate actions.
Currently, pilots rely on flight manuals (hard copies or an electronic tablet) to respond to an emergency. This is prone to human error or misinterpretation. Also, a considerable amount of time is spent in seeking, reading, interpreting and implementing the corrective action.
The proposed augmented head mount virtual assist for the pilot eliminates flight manuals, by virtually guiding the pilot in responding to in-flight necessities. This is a transparent display unit that eliminates the risk of any misinterpretation by pilot by providing assistance to the pilot in terms of visualization of actions to be taken. It uses either pilot fed data or direct data from the cockpit data system as input, depending on the situation. It can also access necessary flight data and present it to the pilot. An added advantage of the head mount assist other than visualization is that the pilot still retains his field of vision.
This paper describes the implementation of the proposed head mount virtual assist for pilots, its advantages over the electronic flight manuals, how it can help reduce or mitigate air fatalities caused due to pilot error and its applications.