Survey on introducing touch-screen into civil aircraft cockpit: Opinions of aircraft designers and pilots

Introducing touch-screen into civil airplane cockpit is inevitable trend for future cockpit design, which will certainly bring a disruptive revolution to the display and control pattern of airplane. Since the strict demand of safety in the civil aviation transport industry, sufficient evaluations and demonstrations are to be conducted before employing haptic technology on flight deck. Therefore, a survey on the opinion of aircraft designers and pilots on introducing touch-screen into cockpit was conducted through structural interview and focus group. 14 airplane designers and 6 airline pilots took part in the survey. The result of the survey is presented in this paper, including conclusion of the fundamental characteristics and advantages of haptic control, identification of potential display and control devices that can be replaced by touch screen, discussion of the challenges that the touch screen brought to the cockpit from human centric perspectives, and also some measures to ensure that touch screen technology can provide a more efficient and safer environment to the pilots.