BY MICHAEL CRISP
In the past, flight instruments were simple because planes were simple. Today, huge commercial jet airliners, filled with hundreds of people, need very complex computer systems, with complicated, hard to read displays, in order to fly. The cockpits of these airplanes are literally packed full of thousands of these displays, each serving a specific purpose, and each essential to the operation of the plane. In fact, there are so many displays needed, that there is usually not enough room in the cockpit for all of them, so many of the displays are multifunction, meaning that they are capable of displaying information from several non-related systems at once. However, because of this particular type of complexity, several major accidents have been attributed to the failure of the pilots to successfully interface with the aircraft's displays.
Displays such as altitude and descent in feet per second have been confused in the past, causing a large plane to slam into the ground killing several hundred people. Before the crash, the crew of the airplane had no indication that their plane was descending towards the ground because the poorly designed display was set to the incorrect function, yet looked very similar to the correct function.
These types of accidents could be avoided by designing avionics displays that could be read more easily by a pilot. In order to do this, one must understand the basic principles of perception, and signal detection. In this paper, I examine the current principles of ergonomics being applied to avionics display design, reaction times, and how perception affects the way in which we perceive complicated sets of visual information.
REFERENCES
Auflick, Jack L. (1992). Cognitive Aspects of Cockpit Displays, Dissertation Abstracts International. 53, p2567.
Lovesey, Edward (1995). Information Flow Between Cockpit and Aircrew, Ergonomics. Special Issue: Festschrift for Professor W. T. Singleton, 38, 558-564.
Seidler, Karen S.(1992) Distance and Organization in Multifunction Displays, Human Factors. Special Issue: Visual Displays, 34, 555-569.