Low-Cost Wearable Head-Up Display for Light General Aviation

Abstract

Verbatim from Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons. Not paraphrased, not summarized.

A low-cost wearable Commercial off The Shelf (COTS) Augmented Reality (AR) Head-Up Display (HUD) system is designed, successfully reduced to practice, and flight tested. The accuracy of the angle of attack and flight path based system is determined to be ½ of a degree. The repeatability of the data from the COTS system is excellent. A complimentary filter on air data flow angles was successful for straight and level flight, dynamic maneuvering, and atmospheric turbulence, provided that a reasonably accurate lift curve is determined. Calculation of the lift curve slope is within 0.01 per degree of the value determined by flight test using alpha/beta probe. The benefits for light General Aviation (GA) are shown through various test points such as flight level changes, target tracking, and flying constant a. In all tasks, an inexperienced pilot was used to fly the aircraft and evaluate the technology. Head tracking technology and algorithms were also developed and shown to be adequate for a low cost COTS implementation for light GA aircraft. A wearable COTS HUD display is ground tested and flight tested and found to be adequate for light general aviation aircraft. This includes all lighting conditions tested in visual meteorological conditions (VMC) and instrument meteorological conditions (IMC).

Authors

• Chinta, Pavan Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
• Martos, Borja, Ph.D. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Keywords

• General Aviation