Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Discrete Information Object Analysis Of Primary Flight Display Clutter, Kenneth Ward

National Training Aircraft Symposium (NTAS)

Modern aircraft utilize digital display screens to provide critical flight and system status information to pilots. As computing power has increased, the number of data sources and information presented has also increased, with the goal of increasing situational awareness. However, the display can become cluttered with extraneous or irrelevant information, to the detriment of pilot cognitive workload. Pilot perceptions of clutter vary with flight experience, introducing unique considerations in the flight training environment, given the experience difference between instructors and students. Researchers have studied the problem, identifying both the number of visual objects and information density as predictors of perception …