Situation Awareness in an Augmented Reality Cockpit: Design, Viewpoints and Cognitive Glue

Abstract

The Taxiway Navigation and Situation Awareness (T-NASA) system is a prototype augmented reality commercial airline cockpit display suite developed to increase efficiency and enhance situation awareness (SA) during airport surface taxi operations. The T-NASA system consists of a head-up display (HUD) and an electronic moving map (EMM), which allow for the display of navigation information using augmented reality techniques. The T-NASA HUD, an egocentric augmented reality display, uses "scene-linked symbology " (Foyle et al., 1996), derived from a set of theoretically-derived and experimentally-validated principles to enhance local guidance and route awareness. The EMM, is an exocentric perspective display that enhances route and global awareness. The principles for enhancing situation awareness in augmented reality systems are reviewed. 1 Problem: Airport Surface Operations The past few years in aviation have seen incredible technological advances in computing power and techniques, positioning and surveillance (e.g., Global Positioning System, GPS; ADS-B), avionics capabilities (e.g., head-up displays, HUDs; and, electronic moving maps, EMMs) and advances in display representations (e.g., "highway in the sky") that are now beginning to emerge into general aviation (GA) and commercial transport airline flight decks. Yet, many facets of our national airspace system (NAS) make little use of these technologies and suffer from issues