Developing an obstacle display for helicopter brownout situations

Niklas Peinecke; Patrizia M. Knabl; Sven Schmerwitz; Hans-Ullrich Döhler

doi:10.1117/12.919081

3 May 2012 Developing an obstacle display for helicopter brownout situations

Niklas Peinecke, Patrizia M. Knabl, Sven Schmerwitz, Hans-Ullrich Döhler

Proceedings Volume 8360, Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) Systems and Applications IX; 83600R (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.919081
Event: SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2012, Baltimore, Maryland, United States

Abstract

Project ALLFlight is DLR's initiative to diminish the problem of piloting helicopters in degraded visual conditions. The problem arises whenever dust or snow is stirred up during landing (brownout/whiteout), eectively blocking the crew's vision of the landing site. A possible solution comprises the use of sensors that are able to look through the dust cloud. As part of the project display symbologies are being developed to enable the pilot to make use of the rather abstract and noisy sensor data. In a rst stage sensor data from very dierent sensors is fused. This step contains a classication of points into ground points and obstacle points. In a second step the result is augmented with ground data bases and depicted in a synthetic head-down display. Regarding the design, several variations in symbology are considered, including variations in color coding, continuous or non-continuous terrain displays and dierent obstacle representations. In this paper we present the basic techniques used for obstacle and ground separation. We choose a set of possibilities for the pilot display and detail the implementation. Furthermore, we present a pilot study, including human factors assessment with focus on usability and pilot acceptance.

Citation Download Citation

Niklas Peinecke, Patrizia M. Knabl, Sven Schmerwitz, and Hans-Ullrich Döhler "Developing an obstacle display for helicopter brownout situations", Proc. SPIE 8360, Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) Systems and Applications IX, 83600R (3 May 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.919081

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