Send article to a friendPrint

A-HMI Advanced Human Machine Interface

The A-HMI in planning mode.

For interaction with the AFMS and in order to harmonize the human machine interfaces on the flight deck the Airborne Human Machine Interface (AHMI) is being developed as a first step.

The Navigation Display (ND) as essential display of today’s cockpits is extended to an “Interactive ND”, which now allows the interaction with the AFMS through the introduction of a pointing device like a touch pad or a track ball for example. Furthermore the tactical planning is being transferred to this “Interactive ND”.

The Interactive ND can be operated through two separate display modes:

• The PLAN mode supports flight planning and enables the pilot to initialize and edit the constraint list representing the basis for any 4D prediction.
• The MONITOR mode supports the pilot monitoring the flight progress with respect to the active 4D-trajectory and the contract between aircraft and ATC.

In planning mode the interactive ND incorporates four different function sets:

• Basic display parameters, such as the display range, display mode etc.
• constraint list edit functions
• trajectory generation and negotiation
• auxiliary functions, referring to mode and display selection

Each function set is placed on one border of the display. Buttons for ‚undo‘ and ‚acknowledge‘ are placed in the left and right lower corners of the screen. The pointing device characteristics correspond to those of a conventional computer mouse. In case the cursor hits a button or is located in a specified area around a display object, this will be highlighted.

The AHMI already was validated within various simulations and flight tests and was highly appreciated by the majority of the evaluation pilots.