Light Weight Eye Visor for commercial pilot use: Human Factors assessment of novel functionalities

This paper presents the evaluation results of an Enhanced Light Weight Eye Visor (ELWEV) prototype from a Human Factors (HF) point of view in a passenger aircraft simulator. The ELWEV is a light weight, color-capable, head-worn display that renders information in the user field of view, including head tracked and world conformal information. The information displayed includes specific functionalities beyond what usual Head Up and/or Head Mounted Displays (HUD/HMD) exhibit nowadays: guidance during taxi/ground operations and flight crew guidance during procedures execution, on top of usual primary flight and alerting HUD/HMD information.Regarding the HF assessment, the methodology has been based on scenario-based evaluations in a simulator with pilot in the loop, with the main objective of quantifying pilot workload reduction and operational benefits with respect to original situation. Three different scenarios have been run to quantify the benefit that can be demonstrated for this technology in different situations and flight phases. A simulator representative of a passenger aircraft has been used for the assessments in order to evaluate workload reduction benefits. The workload evaluation methodology has been based on NASA TLX measurements. Moreover, a guided debriefing has been followed considering HF specialists observations, and measurements to quantify performances have been collected.The results have shown an important reduction in crew workload with respect to the baseline used. This reduction is especially remarkable during ground operations, where the taxi guidance functionality led to an improved awareness of the surroundings and a reduction in head-up–head-down transitions for the pilot, which contributed to maintain eyes out situational awareness. The other evaluated situations, both takeoff and procedures execution, have shown a more limited reduction of workload.