Abstract

With the development of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, the aviation industry has seen a push towards making air flight more accessible, which means making piloting as simple as possible and reducing the required training. This thesis aims to find and analyze ways to reduce the cockpit’s complexity and provide critical information to the pilot using visualizations built on extended reality technology. To achieve this goal, concepts were taken from tried and tested implementations in video games and analyzed on their effectiveness and intuitiveness. The most promising ones were then used as the basis for different prototypes which run on a simulator with a virtual reality (VR) headset. The prototype was tested by users with varying levels of expertise in flying and VR, and the feedback was collected and evaluated. The feedback indicates that video game-inspired augmented visualizations can be used successfully in real-life flying to provide quick and intuitive information about the aircraft’s surroundings. This new input can then help the pilot to increase their situational awareness. Further research needs to be done to improve the prototype’s usability and reduce confusion among the pilots due to an overload of information.

Results/Implementation/Project Description

Conclusion

[ PDF (optional) ] 

[ Slides Kickoff/Final (optional)]