Mission Utility of a Tactile Display in Rotary Wing Operations

Over the last decade, the foremost helicopter issue reported by the military operating in desert environments is the inability to maintain control of the aircraft in degraded visual environments (DVE). A DVE mishap is a special subset of the Spatial Disorientation (SD) mishap. SD is defined as the inability of the pilot to correctly perceive the position, motion or attitude of the aircraft relative to the earth or other significant objects. The US military organization has been developing improved man-machine interfaces that increase pilots’ awareness of spatial orientation, including the use of non-visual tactile display technology for orientation information. A series of flight tests have shown the potential of tactile displays to improve aircrew spatial awareness and reduce aircrew workload, especially in DVE. The combined conclusions and recommendations of the test events support further flight-testing in a US Army UH-60M in DVE conditions and the associated engineering efforts to address reliability and maintainability to ensure US Army fleet-wide operational suitability. To take advantage of the potential risk reduction and performance enhancements of tactile cueing in current and emerging platforms, a multi-sensory system that integrates tactile cueing with advanced visual and audio displays, coupled with automatic or user-selected switching between these sensory modalities is paramount.