Wearable HUD Offers High-tech Retrofits (Skylens)

SIMPLIFYING APPROACHES

“We looked at the approach phase as the one that is most challenging,” said Yahav, “especially if you’re getting new instructions or changes. Typically, one pilot will put his hand to the FMS, and the other will monitor to make sure the other pilot doesn’t make a mistake. The workload increases dramatically. If there’s a mistake in the FMS, you could go to a different waypoint or approach while the autopilot is coupled to the FMS. It’s hard to recover, and takes a lot of attention within the cockpit.”

What the new AR technology does, he explained, “is couple the FMS and FMS display to be superimposed on the real world.” Looking through the SkyLens, the pilot wearing the device can not only “see” outside the aircraft in any direction, because vision isn’t limited just to a fixed-in-place 35- to 40-degree field-of-view HUD, but the pilot can also “see” all the elements of the flight on the SkyLens display. SkyLens tracks the pilot’s eye position, so it always knows where the pilot is looking. And because SkyLens is worn on the pilot’s head, essentially the pilot has an unlimited field-of-view, in any direction.

https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2018-10-16/wearable-hud-offers-high-tech-retrofits#