Research on the influence of flight attitude display on the operation of unusual attitude recovery

Objective To reduce flight accidents and ensure aviation safety by comparing the combination effects of three attitude directional indicator (ADI) designs and two reference frames [moving horizon (MH) and moving aircraft (MA)] on the operation of aircraft unusual attitude recovery. Methods The simulated recovery experiments were carried out by E-prime programming the interactively matched pictures that were presented by the regular perspective-view aircraft symbol (PAS) under unusual flight altitude and two reference frames that referenced MH and MA. The subjects were 34 male college students in the full-time military academy, with average age of (22.43±1.32) years old. The experiment was done based on 2×3×4 intra-test design. The combination of 2 reference frames and 3 ADI styles produced six displays and each of them corresponded to 8 rotation altitudes. Totally 48 pictures were displayed. During learning phase, the usual or unusual flight altitude pictures were presented to the subjects and the recovery operation was instructed to press the " F" key for the recovery to the left and the " J" key to the right. During training phase, 4 unusual flight altitude pictures were presented to the subjects. When the subjects were able to correctly judge these 4 pictures they were thought to be ready for the formal experiment. In formal experiment, 48 pictures were randomly presented to the subjects and the reaction time and the number of correct recovery were recorded. Results The intra-group variance analysis with reaction time as the dependent variable indicated that the effect of the interaction between ADI style and reference frame on subjects′ reaction time was statistically significant, [F(2, 66)=6.267, P=0.003, η2=0.160]. The combination of conventional ADI format and PAS format with MA reference frame showed better matched effect. The intra-group analysis of the variance with correct rate as the dependent variable indicated that the effect of interaction between the ADI style and the reference frame on subjects′ correct rate was statistically significant [F(2, 66)=12.018, P<0.001, η2=0.267]. The MH reference frame matched with 3 ADI formats showed better results than the CMD-MA display and the CON-MA display. PAS-MA design also showed good performance. Conclusions ①Two new ADI formats (CMD, PAS) show certain advantages that traditional and conventional ADI format (CON) does not have. ②The MH reference frame has the advantage on overall correct recovery rate. ③The study theoretically recommends the PAS-MA display design. Key words: Perceptual disorders; Human engineering; Man-machine systems; Aircraft; Data display; Flight attitudes