Force-Feedback Integration with NASA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System Cockpit Situation Display

NASA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System Volumetric Cockpit Situation Display is an advanced software tool for real-time flight management from the cockpit. In its current development, users interact with visual elements on the display to retrieve operational information and manipulate objects using a standard computer mouse. In the present study, force feedback is integrated in the Cockpit Situation Display framework and its effectiveness on the performance of two tasks is investigated: object selection and route manipulation. For the object-selection task, an attractive force feedback was used to guide the user to the target. For the route-manipulation task, guidance was generated as variable force feedback, corresponding to the changes to the flight path, relative to obstacles. The effectiveness of the proposed force-feedback models was evaluated in user studies using a Novint Falcon haptic device. It is found that force feedback improves the movement time in the object-selection tasks for diagonal movements. For the route-manipulation tasks, force feedback results in a longer movement time as compared to the mouse; however, force feedback increases the movement precision. Further investigation on the interaction effect of feedback levels and task complexity is needed to evaluate the overall effectiveness of force feedback for use with the Cockpit Situation Display.