Virtual cockpit instruments displayed on head-worn displays – Capabilities for future cockpit design

Head-worn displays (HWDs) have been used on military flight decks for many years. The advancement of this technology makes it also an interesting choice for the human-machine interface (HMI) design of future civil aircraft. This paper presents an example of how HWDs can impact new cockpit layouts. We discuss several possibilities of designing and integrating so-called virtual cockpit instruments (VCIs), which are generated by an HWD. These VCIs can be imagined as virtual display areas that can be positioned freely around the pilot. Their major benefit is that they create many new options for the design of a flexible, task-adaptive cockpit environment. In this paper, the proposed HMI is applied to a helicopter scenario in an offshore wind park. We present our purpose-made hover symbology and introduce several variants for placing this virtual display within the cockpit. First results from a simulator study show the potential of VCIs for future cockpit design. Especially, the possibility to couple the virtual instrument to the pilot's head rotation to make it always available seems promising for certain scenarios. Further, the human factors experiment provides valuable insights for further development of the concept.