The Impact on Helicopter Cockpits of Integrated Advanced Flight Controls, Avionics and Optics

Anticipated future helicopter missions can be characterized by increased complexity, flight path control precision and flexibility requirements. Analysis indicates that conventional helicopter cockpits must be substantially improved to provide a pilot workload which enables performance of the future missions. Introduction of multiplexing, electro-optic displays, multiple axis sidearm controllers, and fly-by-wire/light can lead to cockpit improvements offering reduced pilot workload. The improvement is dependent on the level of technology integration introduced. High level integration results in improvement far greater than would be expected from the individual technologies and can lead to a dramatically different cockpit than present in current helicopters.