To be or not to be? Assessment on using touchscreen as inceptor in flight operation

Introduction. The innovative concept on applying touchscreen controls on the flight deck design had been discussed for a long time. However, there are some potential risks on touchscreen applications constrained by the issues associated with turbulence and pilots’ inadvertent activation. Research questions. This research aims to evaluate human-computer interactions and handling quality using touchscreens as inceptor in flight operations. Method. The scenario was set to conduct an instrument landing on the final approach using Future System Simulator (FSS). There are 8 commercial pilots (flight hours M = 4475.0, SD = 2742.1) using three different inceptors including traditional sidestick, touchscreen and gamepad for ILS landing. Results. There was a significant difference among three inceptors on handling quality in both landing without turbulence (F (2,14) = 6.25, p =.01, ηp2 = .47) and landing with turbulence (F (2,14) = 3.93, p =.04, ηp2 = .36) scenarios. Furthermore, post Hoc comparisons revealed that the handling quality of touchscreen was significantly lower than sidestick and gamepad. Discussion. By analyzing participants’ empirical experiences, the touchscreen inceptor was rated as the lowest handling quality among three inceptors due to the novel and lack of practice effects in flight operations. However, there is a potential on the information supply for touchscreen inceptor based on pilots’ feedbacks. Conclusion. Touchscreens provide numerous benefits for making flight decks simpler, but the usage as an inceptor is still in its infancy and there are still lots of problems that need to be fixed. Future Systems Simulator (FSS) is a highly reconfigurable modular flight simulator that allows pilots/researchers to explore the potential on future flight decks design for single pilot operations. There are some potential benefits on the implementation touchscreen inceptor for future flight deck design if the human-centred design principle can be integrated in the early stage.