VOD-CA - Assisting Human Flight Performance and Situation Awareness in Lateral Deconflicting

Kurzfassung

Velocity-obstacle based collision avoidance displays can provide the pilot with information about potential conflicts and assist manual avoidance maneuvers. Lateral deconflicting assistance is a significant field in aviation research since it complements vertical conflict resolution provided by available collision avoidance systems (ACAS/TCAS). Avoiding conflicts in the horizontal plane increases the number of options for a more efficient deconfliction. VOD-CA (Velocity-Obstacle based Display for Collision Avoidance) is a display implementation developed by DLR to enhance pilot awareness of potential conflicts in velocity space and provide necessary information to derive lateral conflict resolving maneuvers (Peinecke et al., 2013). It represents conflict geometries in a track-up velocity space, centered on own-ship speed and heading. In a first explorative study participants with flight simulation experience flew several scenarios using VOD-CA to avoid conflicts while their situation awareness was assessed. The results indicate adequate situation awareness. Participants could stay sufficiently separated from other aircraft by choosing safe headings and speeds. It is discussed that some aspects of the display could be misinterpreted when confused with spatial hints. Nevertheless essential information could be derived to stay clear of potential conflicts.