Gaugeless, Computerized Cockpits 33
CriX writes "There's been some work on creating a more intuitive airplane cockpit. The idea is to use graphics and symbols instead of gauges and numbers to enhance a pilot's awareness. The data shows that these are a lot easier to read under turbulence and the information easier to interpret for less experience pilots. Sweet, I love human factors engineering."
Oh wonderful... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh wonderful... (Score:4, Insightful)
The 5+ computers already in your car, on the other hand, probably have never given you a problem. Most people don't even know they're there, because they are designed to last longer. Similarly, the computers on these airplanes would (hopefully) be made to last, just like the computers that are necessary to keep most modern military jets from crashing into the ground and are reliable enough for combat use.
Re:Oh wonderful... (Score:2, Informative)
The computers used in cars, planes, and now some dishwashers are not really designed to last any longer than a PC. They are designed to do ONE thing; monitor this or regulate that, they do this one task well and with out fail. PCs are merely supped up versions of these computers but they are being asked to do dozens of different tasks all at once. It is when the programs doing these tasks don't cooperate with one another that results in computer crashing.
nice, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
who pays for all the new cockpit instruments?
thats right... I do! (think airline seat prices)
airline industry is not one that can afford to do something like this. would only be practical for boeing or airbus to do on the new planes coming off of the assembly line.
Re:nice, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, the article suggests that the potential markets for this technology is the Navy or NASA. I doubt that he's even going to try to get this in jetliners so you won't have to worry about it affecting your airline seat price.
However, I agree that this article does fail to make any cost/benefit analysis, which is the point I think you are trying to make.
GMD
Re:nice, but... (Score:1)
Re:nice, but... (Score:3, Informative)
New display/guages means new training. This is the FAA, and the secure flying of millions of people every year that we are talking about. There is no other choice but to re-train the pilots.
In computer terms, think of the change from OS 9 to OS X. Different but better, right? Depends who you ask (me says OS X better). Either way, it took time for people to adapt to the "new way" to do things.
I don't want a pilot "learning" as he/she flys me at 530mph at 30,000 feet off the ground.
Re:nice, but... (Score:1)
True, although its better than 530 mph, 30 feet off the ground isn't it? :)
Re:nice, but... (Score:1)
Re:nice, but... (Score:1)
When in doubt, drop a name (Score:3, Interesting)
The arrogance...geez. So Colburn suspects that the Kennedy accident was due to the pilot fixating on a single gauge. He thinks that if there was a new display there's no way that there would have been a problem.
Good grief. This is just a bunch of guesswork without any evidence or even any sound reasoning whatsoever. This guy can't make a good pitch for his new technology so he'll claim that some famous accident wouldn't have happened if they had used his technology. It really sickens me when people try to use public tragedies to make money.
GMD
Re:When in doubt, drop a name (Score:2)
No kidding. I wonder if he thinks Kennedy would have died on a much earlier flight because he would have been more comfortable flying with even less experience and would have done something stupid that the gague couldn't fix simply because he didn't have the experience that comes with figuring out what all the gagues do and why.
Re:When in doubt, drop a name (Score:1, Informative)
According to this, visibility was 8 miles. He was a VFR rated pilot in VFR conditions. I could understand him saying that a VFR pilot that ran into IFR might have a better chance with this system, but you are right, he is full of shit, if a pilot is getting fixated on a single indicator in VFR conditions, he's got bigger problems.
Fighting inertia? (Score:4, Interesting)
"The system is designed to preserve the status quo as opposed to bringing forward innovations," Temme said. "We're fighting inertia."
Well, the system is designed to maintain the status quo because it works pretty darn well. All the statistics indicate that flying is the safest form of transportation. Perhaps if (a) Temme was able to show that cockpit confusion was a problem serious enough to warrant a solution and (b) they showed with scientific studies that their new-fangled system improved the situation by a significant amount, perhaps people would listen to them. But just to claim that the reason everyone doesn't drop a system that has worked well for decades and adopt a radically new instrumentation panel is due to bureaucracy is pretty presumptuous of them.
GMD
Re:Fighting inertia? (Score:1)
Re:Fighting inertia? (Score:2)
Like you said, all in interpretation. People can make statistics say anything.
Re:Fighting inertia? (Score:1)
Dumbing down, not improving (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a perfect example of eliminating the need to understand how something works in order to operate it. A pilot that understands how and why his/her plane works will be a better pilot because they will be able to interpret things about their flight that are not told by the gagues. Are we really better of if we make planes that you can fly without a great deal of knowledge, understanding, and experience?
It's like having an idiot lite for your car's oil pressure instead of an oil pressure gague. The light only gives you 30-40 seconds advanced warning that you're about to destroy your engine, while the gague can potentially warn you of an upcoming problem much sooner (even if the problem is probably a broken oil pressure gague
Re:Dumbing down, not improving (Score:2, Interesting)
in response to pilot shortage (Score:2)
Probably everything.
Light on details, not looking like a GoodThing(tm) (Score:4, Insightful)
This article is SO light on details and substance that I am amazed that it was posted. Instrument flight is difficult, yes, HOWEVER, current guages provide the experiences instrument pilot with a lot of useful information.
A major concern of mine would be that the system designers replace the feedback that the old instruments provide with something that is easier to interpret, but is missing some information content that an experienced pilot would get from the traditional AI,ASI,HI,VSI + Radio Nav / GPS of today.
Flight directors and EFIS displays are excellent today, and, the new large artificial horizon display that can been seen in the Cirrus Designs SR22 upgrade avionics, along with the traditional instrument layout (even if electronic) is a major boon to safety and reliablilty. This also has the advantage of positive transfer of training. Something that the article's system might not have, but who can tell? There wasn't a ton of information in that fluffy article.
People interested in this topic would do well to search for info on the FAA Alaska projects and 'highway in sky' instrument display systems that have been prototyped over the last few years.
As for people who are concerned about failure. Rest assured that even today, aircraft of all sizes that are certified for instrument flight have redundant gauges and systems. Even a B777 has a simple mechanical aritificial horizon and wet-compass hidden in with the electronic instruments.
Project Simpsons (Score:2, Funny)
I mean, I can't wait until I can get into a plane and press 'GO' to take off and fly, and then 'STOP' to land.
God bless the military.
Nobody here needs to badmouth this (Score:4, Informative)
Many new aircraft are equipped with the MFD's (multi-function displays) that the military has had for decades (in one form or another) and it's about time. Most of the work done in this field is done for military use.
Anyone can bitch all they want, but when Betty starts squawking you listen and when you look at your panel you need to know exactly what's wrong. MFD's do that better than any analog guage. Combine advances in data delivery with multiple bioinformatics and a pilot will have a nearly intuitive understanding of what's going on.
I don't see a downside here, since everything is going to be exhaustively tested before it's permitted to move mass quantities of crunchy humans from one shopping spot to another. It's going to be some time before the really cool stuff finds its way into public transportation. Personally, I'm still waiting for a civilian version of a HUD, because what passes for useful car instrumentation blows (looking through the gaps in the steering wheel for data sucks) and from a consumer point-of-view, nothing addresses this shortcomming (not even that bs Cadillac thermal display).
Cheers.
Re:Nobody here needs to badmouth this (Score:2)
What we could snag off the shelf to accomplish something similar to this would be the same kind of proximity sensors that go into neighborhood annoynance devices (car alarms) which sense proximity based on very low intensity microwaves (like a radar). We could set these up fore and aft with radomes which could be wagged to cover a significant azimuth. Almost every automobile since the late 80's in the US has some kind of computer system for ignition, brakes, and dealer incentive idiot lights (I would like to hack car computers systems but I'm a poor man).
It would be nice to have a "cooperation" protocol among sensing systems between vehicles, with some kind of transponder squirt between vehicles, an info-only handshake to id what class of vehicle, relative speed to you, and maybe even something useful like call-signs or a cell-phone number/email address/tag-line limited to 32 characters and displayed if and only if you wanted that info. And you can bet your ass there would be an advert flag on this crap...I'd probably have road-rage as a Frito-Lay truck passes by and I get a chime and a tagline of "Once your crunch...you can't stop!" slide along the top of the display.
It would also be pretty easy to have transponder squirt relays before each major on-ramp/off-ramp which would you could preload so you'd get a chime or maybe a customized "voice" informing you of a place you need to go (preloaded by the user or based on an accumulation of info over time and enabled if you're interested in such alerts). This could be done using a locality broadcast in a restricted ghz range aimed to cover areas of the highway/road so it would dissipate quickly instead of bleeding into the local area RF traffic. It wouldn't take much to put an eraser mouse or trackball on the steering wheel so you wouldn't have to take your eyes off the road or your hands off the wheel to make selections or interact with it...take it a step further and just have it use voice commands.
This stuff is all easily achived without touching big-brothers wet dream in orbit. Best to leave that stuff to the military so they can drop ordinance or find their way back to the mess-tent. Hell, most of this stuff is probably already sitting in a building right now waiting for the next big auto show. Hopefully fellow gadet freaks in subsidiaries of Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Mercedes, Plymoth, or Volvo are reading this...we need to get car-makers infected with this stuff. But the thing that really drives everyone nuts is that The Man will own everyone's ass with anything that can do these things...you know every car will have it's serial hashed into the transponder, which in turn could be used to track vehicles and their exact mph over the posted speed limit anywhere along the path, and in effect, this would both lower the number of law-enforcement people on the road, while generating a huge revenue stream--that's the only thing which will really be considered by governments, while the value-add of tracking road-use, or accidents would just be benefits after the fact.
Warning slippery slope and technology as a ratchet metaphors abound when mind and movement control are involved.
Cheers.
Re:Nobody here needs to badmouth this (Score:2)
They do make cars with the instrument panel in the center of the dash facing the driver to eliminate that inconveinance. However alot of people don't seem to like them, as they have to get used to not looking down for their speed/gas gague/etc.
But I agree on the HUD, I would love to have one in my car. I hear the new Corvette has one that works very well (at least according to Car and Driver)
As a pilot... (Score:4, Informative)
As for glass cockpits/ fly by wire, these are no different from normal analog cockpits, except the info happens to be on a screen. The guages, buttons, and controls are all in the same place, and they all look the same. They just happen to be on a screen. Next time you fly Southwest, you will probably fly on both the 737-700(glass) and the -300 (analog). They are the same. The instruments in use now ARE symbolic. The altimeter forms one shape for about 4000 feet, and another for about 14000. But the important numbers are there when I need them. I prefer what I have now.
altitude? um, the little hand is on the triangle (Score:2)
Donald Norman's comments (Score:2)
I can't find the article, because the link now seems to be broken, but Donald Norman [jnd.org] has/had quite a lot to say about the interface of aircraft cockpits in his book "Things that make us smart [amazon.com]".
From memory though, he was mostly impressed with the current evolution of aircraft control panels rather than scathing of them in any serious way. Among other things, the large and mechanical controls have an important side-effect of aiding communication between the pilot and co-pilot and what each of them is doing at any given time.
His main negative comment, which I think I agree with in principle although I'm not a pilot, was that some of the dials had several needles, and they weren't automatically intuitive to read. Looking at them had to be learned, and it wasn't so much of a surprise that many accidents in the past have been caused by things like pilots mis-reading the altitude indicator.
Much of this could be fixed (in theory at least) by using digital numeric displays instead of dials, but there are other problems. Also base 10 numbers made from arabic numerals arguably aren't intuitive. Interpreting ordinary numbers is another thing to be learned, and although virtually everyone in modern society can read numbers, there have still been measured differences between looking at a number and interpreting what it stands for.
Getting a glimpse of a four digit number could mean something comparably big (9111) or comparably small (2111). Compare this with a graphical representation of the numbers using bar comparisons for example, and there's instantaneous recognition of the meaning without all the brain processing that needs to go on.
Perhaps this is what the intent of the article is