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<title>Effects of field-of-view on pilot performance in night vision goggles flight trials: preliminary findings</title>

2000; SPIE; Volume: 4021; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1117/12.389163

1996-756X

Sion Jennings, Greg Craig,

Human-Automation Interaction and Safety

Night vision goggles (NVGs) allow pilots to see and navigate under minimal levels of illumination. While NVGs allow the user to see more than they typically could under these levels of illumination, the visual information provided by NVGs has a limited field-of-view. The size of the field-of- view can diminish the pilot's spatial orientation ability in the night flying environment. We examined pilot performance in low level helicopter flight while the pilots were using NVGs with 40 degree(s), and 52 degree(s) fields-of-view. The pilots flew a standardized ADS-33D hover maneuver in a Bell 206 helicopter equipped with an accurate position measurement system. The tests were conducted in simulated night conditions and both subjective and objective measures of task performance were obtained. Pilot Cooper-Harper ratings increased from Level 1 baseline ratings to Level 2 ratings when the NVGs were used, indicating worse performance when using the NVGs. Small rating differences were noticed between the 52 degree(s) and 40 degree(s) field-of-view conditions. Similar trends were noticed in the objective data of altitude, and lateral and longitudinal station keeping errors.