#Airbus
brings two projects together in modernising the Primary Flight Display
Since the earliest days of flight, the aviation sector has
worked to develop better ways for pilots to understand their aircraft’s
position relative to the ground. The evolution has gone from visual cues
outside the aircraft to in-cockpit digital displays with data-rich views of the
environment – and innovators at Airbus are ready to improve this
instrumentation once again.
A cornerstone of today’s cockpits is the Primary #Flight
Display (PFD), an electronic instrument that brings together the functions of six
previously separate gauges on the panel: the airspeed indicator, attitude
indicator, altimeter, turn coordinator, horizontal situation indicator and
vertical speed indicator.
“Every generation of PFD gave pilots a better version of
what they already were used to,” explained Fabrice Bousquet, an Airbus vision
systems expert. “In 2015, we started working on a research and technology
project that would break with tradition to exploit the full potential of modern
screen technology – giving pilots their data superimposed onto a nearly-real
visual representation of where they’re heading.”
This led to development of a synthetic vision system (or
SVS) that received a positive response from pilots during flight tests. Crucial
to the SVS’ success was Airbus’ work on another project – the primary
full-format flight display (PF3D) – because, without changes, older-generation
PFDs would have degraded the visual dimension of information being presented.
Giving #pilots the information they need
“We had to adapt the scales because they weren’t uniform
across the display, which would have resulted in natural features like
mountains being flattened,” explained Alexis Frenot, the SVS and PF3D project
leader. “We also needed the capacity to show pilots their trajectory. While existing
PFDs give pilots the information needed to work this out for themselves, our
new system actually shows them.”
Teams for the SVS and PF3D systems have now merged and are
conducting feasibility studies in advance of the display’s anticipated commercial
service entry in 2021. “We know from customer focus groups that airlines and
their pilots would like to have cockpits with this technology,” said Frenot,
“and that they value the added situational awareness it provides.”
The combined team is confident these new displays will
become the norm. “We have a wave of pilots who grew up with information-rich
screens, and the benefits are obvious to them,” concludes Frenot. “Add the
ability to ‘see’, even at night and in poor conditions, and you have the best of
the old and the new combined.”
