Development and Evaluation of a Prototype Electronic Vertical Situation Display by

Automation mode awareness problems have been experienced on many air transport aircraft and have been reported to the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) database. An examination of current generation AutoFlight Systems and a review of the ASRS database highlighted a lack of feedback in the vertical channel of aircraft automation. It was hypothesized that many of the incidents involving mode awareness problems could be mitigated by increased feedback in the vertical channel through an Electronic Vertical Situation Display (EVSD). Functional requirements for an EVSD were developed and a implementation of the display was prototyped on a part task flight simulator. To evaluate the utility of the display, an experimental set of test scenarios were developed based on a representative set of known mode awareness problems. Commercial airline pilots were used as subjects in this experiment. This thesis presents the subjective and objective results of this evaluation of the display. Certain types of scenarios showed a statistically significant improvement when the EVSD was available. In scenarios where another display explicitly showed the relevant information