Audiotactile Displays for Improving Situation Awareness and Mitigating Spatial Disorientation

Spatial disorientation (SD) from loss of situation awareness (SA) is a significant safety hazard for helicopter pilots. The focus of the present research is to highlight the potential utility of multimodal displays for improving SA and counteracting SD, particularly for scenarios specific to rotary wing flight. These circumstances include degraded visual environments (DVE; e.g., brownout conditions, rotor wash) and vection, the illusion of self motion. Herein, we propose audiotactile displays may provide the best means for displaying egocentric information to the pilot to mitigate SD by providing supplementary information when visual cues are absent and alternative information when visual cues may be misleading.