Lightweight, head-worn displays designed for military aircraft might eventually find a home in commercial cockpits as well. Researchers at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., have developed an eyewear clip-on display for use by pilots during airport surface operations, the subject of recent solicitation to industry for possible commercialization. The miniature display with an associated head tracker and speech recognition component thus far have been tested only in a lab environment, but could be flight tested by next year, says Trey Arthur, a NASA research electronics engineer.
The NASA system received a patent in 2010 as a “multi-modal cockpit interface for improved airport surface operations.” Aimed at improving upon the situational awareness afforded by head-up displays (HUD), which have a limited field of view, the system consists of a head-tracking device, a processing element and a head-worn display. The processing element receives head position information from the head tracker and the aircraft’s current location from GPS or an inertial navigation system. It presents a real-time virtual airport scene on the display corresponding with the pilot’s head position and aircraft location. The processing element could also convert voice commands from the pilot using speech-recognition software, for example, to select among display modes or adjust for brightness.
