Study on Pilot Flight Display using Pin-Array-Type Tactile Display

When flying aircraft, it is required for pilots to watch outside and flight instruments inside carefully. However, it often becomes difficult because of high visual workload. The visual workload often increases during take off phase, landing phase of flight, or doing some kind of tasks such as hovering, etc.. Furthermore, the condition of weather and aircraft itself may also increase it. If the visual workload becomes too high, it becomes difficult for pilots to gather flight information appropriately. Therefore, such difficulties sometimes lead to accidents or incidents. For such situation, the authors have proposed using a Tactile Flight Display (TFD) for flight safety. A TFD is a kind of flight instrument using tactile display. It enables pilots to feel some kind of flight information through their tactile sensation. This paper describes two kinds of TFDs which we have developed. Both of them consist of pin-array-type tactile display devices. One of the developed TFD provides a pilot with flight vector cue, another TFD provides pitch angle cue. Then the authors report about the experimental result for evaluating the flight performance using those two types of TFDs.