Perception of Horizontal Aircraft Separation on a Cockpit Display of Traffic Information

Abstract

Perception of aircraft separation on a cockpit display of traffic information (CDTI) may be influenced by many different display elements such as: information content of aircraft predictors and history, number and type of display background elements, map orientation, map scale, and update rate. The experimental task required subjects to judge whether an intruder aircraft would ultimately pass in front of or in back of their own aircraft. The results of nine experiments are described. Displayed history did not improve performance, although it was desired by pilots when there was no other explicit display of aircraft turn rate. Pilots made fewer errors when they had predictive information, especially with the predictor curved proportional to turn rate. Varying the rate of updating information on the display from 0.1 to 4 s did not affect performance. There was no difference in performance when display viewing time was varied from 1 to 16 s.