Tactile Display for Aircraft Control

Abstract : The final report presents a set of manual tracking experiments that have been conducted to determine the suitability of tactual displays for presenting flight-control information in multi-task situations. Although tracking error scores are considerably greater than scores obtained with a continuous visual display, preliminary results indicate the inter-task interference effects are substantially less with the tactual display in situations that impose high visual scanning workloads. The single-task performance degradation found with the tactual display appears to be a result of the coding scheme rather than the use of the tactual sensory mode per se. Analysis with the state-variable pilot/vehicle model shows that reliable predictions of tracking errors can be obtained for a limited set of system configurations once the pilot-related model parameters have been adjusted to reflect the pilot-display interaction.