FlyTact: A Tactile Display Improves a Helicopter Pilot’s Landing Performance in Degraded Visual Environments

Abstract

Helicopter landings are more challenging in ‘brownout’ conditions, in which sand and dust is stirred up by the rotary wing aircraft, obscuring visibility. Safe brownout landings require new sensor and display technologies to provide the pilot with information on helicopter motion. In this respect tactile displays are promising: The pilot can maintain visual references as much as possible while ‘feeling’ the crucial helicopter speed and altitude information. The Royal Netherlands Air Force and TNO developed a tactile display to provide the helicopter pilot with information on groundspeed and altitude during landings in degraded visual environments like brownouts. The tactile display was tested in flight trials with a Cougar helicopter. The test pilot performed brownout-like landing manoeuvres faster, more accurate, better controlled, and with less mental effort when altitude and/or groundspeed information was presented on the tactile display.