Assessments on human-computer interaction using touchscreen as control inputs in flight operations

The developing technology on innovative touchscreen applied in the cockpit can integrate control inputs and outputs on the same display in flight operations. Flight systems could be updated by modifying the touchscreen user interface without the complicated processes on reconfiguring cockpit panels. There is a potential risk on touchscreen components constrained by the issues associated with inadvertent touch, which may be defined as any system detectable touch issued to the touch sensors without the pilot’s operational consent. Pilots’ visual behaviours can be explored by using eye trackers to analyze the relationship between eye scan patterns and attention shifts while conducting monitoring tasks in flight operations. This research aims to evaluate human-computer interactions using eye tracker to investigate the safety concerns on implementation of touchscreen in flight operations. The scenario was set to conduct an instrument landing on the final approach using future system simulator. Participants were required to interact with all the control surfaces and checklists using the touchscreens located on different areas in the cockpit. Each participant performed landing scenario as pilot-flying (PF) and pilot-monitoring (PM) in random sequence. Currently PF and PM perform different tasks related to control inputs and control outputs monitoring in the flight deck. The PF’s primary obligation is to fly the aircraft’s flight path, and the PM’s main responsibility is to monitor the aircraft’s flight path and cross-check to the PF’s operational behaviours. By analyzing participants’ visual behaviours and scanning patterns, the findings on HCI related to applying touchscreen for future flight deck design would be applicable. There are some benefits on the implementation touchscreen for future flight deck design if the human-centred design principle can be integrated in the early stage.