AFRL auditory horizon project named DOD Hot Technology winner

  • Published
  • By John Schutte
  • Human Effectiveness Directorate
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  Technology developed at the Air Force Research Laboratory to help keep general aviation pilots flying safely in low-visibility conditions has won a contest that highlights top projects within the Department of Defense laboratory network.
 
Researchers at the AFRL Human Effectiveness Directorate, Warfighter Interface Division, Battlespace Acoustics Branch, led by principal computer engineer Dr. Douglas Brungart and research psychologist Brian Simpson, developed an auditory horizon system to offset the effects of spatial disorientation in flight.
 
Spatial disorientation--the inability of a pilot to correctly interpret the attitude, altitude, or airspeed of an aircraft relative to the earth or other reference points--is experienced by nearly all pilots at some point, Simpson said.
 
Spatial disorientation occurs when a pilot receives conflicting or misleading information from visual, inner ear, and other sensory systems that monitor position, balance and coordination, causing confusion about the pilot's physical orientation relative to the earth. 

This conflicting information can be compelling enough to cause a pilot to ignore visual flight instruments and rely on personal intuition for determining the true aircraft orientation, often leading to disaster, according to Dr. Brungart. 

Researchers believe a method to counter the effects of spatial disorientation may be to give pilots non-visual cues--in this case, auditory signals or sounds--to present information about the attitude of a maneuvering aircraft. 

Sounds are presented to pilots over headphones such that they seem to change location in the pilot's head in response to changes in the attitude of the aircraft. This audio horizon provides a reference point that indicates--as does the visual "artificial horizon" indicator on every aircraft's instrument panel--the direction in which the pilot must maneuver to achieve a safe attitude. 

A key feature of the system is that it presents information via a pilot-selected auditory entertainment signal, such as music from a CD or MP3 player, rather than using tones or noises. This makes the system practical for pilots to use continuously in long-range flights since it does not inject any annoying or additional sounds to a pilot's headset that could contribute to auditory information overload. 

DOD TechMatch is a web-based portal that gives industry and academia access to research & development opportunities, licensable patents, and information on approximately 120 Navy, Army, and Air Force laboratories in the United States, which make many of their facilities available to private companies for research and testing. 

DOD TechMatch announced three Hot Technology winners for 2008, one each for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Each winning technology will be featured in a professional outreach video paid for by DOD TechMatch and created by Media Marketing Consultants (MMC). 

The winning technologies and labs also will be highlighted on the DOD TechMatch's website (http://www.dodtechmatch.com).