Context-Sensitive Augmented Reality Assistance in the Cockpit

Synthetic vision on head-mounted displays (HMDs) has developed into an increasingly common type of assistance for pilots, both in commercial and in general aviation. As synthetic vision only augments the view on objects in the outside world, there is untapped potential to extend the use of HMDs to assisting pilots with augmented reality (AR) inside of the cockpit. We present two in-cockpit AR assistance designs for in-flight emergency assistance in a simulator study with fifteen licensed pilots. The two AR assistances were designed to be sensitive to either temporal context, or to spatial and temporal context. The simulator study revealed that the presented AR assistances proved effective for mitigating an unexpected failure. Pilots preferred the fully context-sensitive AR assistance overall, while only the AR representation with temporal context showed significantly shorter reaction times than the conventional aid. Our findings suggest that AR can be a valuable tool for assisting pilots in critical flight phases, contributing to increased safety in aviation.