Tactile Display Design for Flight Envelope Protection and Situational Awareness

Spatial disorientation and visual channel saturation are defined as critical situations encountered by military pilots. Such subjects are interesting research areas likely to create innovative systems able to surmount obstacles of this kind. The integration of new stimulation techniques (sensory substitute, adjunct for visual and audio feedback) may be considered to make the visual channel better. This contribution may help in integrating tactile stimulation to improve or substitute the visual channel. It may also help to better interpret the spatial disorientation awareness signals and the vestibulo-ocular response limitations. The innovation of the proposed approach translates in: (i) the development of the PI-Inverse dynamics controller to provide a time delay reduction of the low cost tactile actuator, and thus, high-performance tactile system; (ii) an approach based on fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is being used in order to translate the turn rate angle, the flight path climb angle and the warning messages into tactile signal features instead of a conventional approach based on direct coding of the pitch and bank angles; and (iii) the consideration of the flight envelope. The fuzzy set translation of flight parameters into tactile signals is also a pragmatic and useful way to design the system.