Evaluation of an Enhanced Head-Up Display Tunnel Design during a RNP-AR Curved Approach

The reduction of fatal accidents is the primary goal for aviation manufacturers and researchers since the beginning of aviation. Since the human factor has gained a key role in research on this topic, the improvement of the human-machine interaction became one of the vital tasks. Enhanced and Synthetic vision systems, such as the Head-Up Display (HUD), are trying to assist the pilots especially in the approach phase. This is the reason why this bachelor thesis aimed to evaluate the design of a head-up display „Tunnel-in-the-Sky“ symbology, presented in the raster mode of the HGS 4000. The associated experiment was conducted in the generic experimental cockpit (GECO) at the Institute of Flight Guidance at DLR Brunswick. The experiment took place with a sample of 6 instrument-rated commercial pilots. The pilots were asked to fly two curved approaches into Brunswick, one with the “Tunnel-in-the-Sky” display and a second one with a basic display layout. For the recording of eye-tracking data a head-mounted system was used in combination with a camera based head-tracking system. To assess the pilots’ workload and situational awareness during each trial, the NASA-TLX and 3D SART questionnaires were conducted as subjective measures after each flight. For the determination of the tracking performance, the vertical and lateral deviations to the desired approach path were statistically analyzed. The results showed that the “Tunnel-in-the-Sky” symbology provided a very high tracking performance with a low perceived workload and high perceived situational awareness. The analysis of the eye-tracking data enabled the identification of main areas of interest and their analysis revealed possible attentional tunneling with the ”Tunnel-in-the-Sky” symbology and large differences concerning the visual attention spent on different areas of interest compared to the basic display layout. The visual presentation of eye-tracking data showed the area covered by the pilots’ scan patterns as well as hot spots on the display. This work shows that the eye-tracking device can be used to derive accurate data on visual attention with a head-up display and provides recommendations concerning the use of an eye-tracking device for future evaluations with the HUD