Testing of New Terrain Following Guidance Algorithms for Rotorcraft Displays

New terrain following algorithms specific to rotorcraft navigation were developed and tested on a fixed base simulator. Guidance and cueing were accomplished through a Synthetic Vision System (SVS) and the Altitude and ground Track Predicting Flight Path Marker (ATP-FPM) from prior work. Pilots flew two separate courses that were designed to replicate real world environments as well as test key components of the algorithms. Experiment data showed significant improvement in the Max Descent and Climb (MD+C) algorithm in comparison to our base line Single Point (SP) and Max Descent (MD) algorithms with no additional perceived workload.