Pictures for Pilots

As the speed of aircraft increases, the strain on the pilot's judgment increases even faster. A good part of the trouble, thinks Commander George W. Hoover of the Office of Naval Research, is that the aircraft's swarm of instruments make their reports in figures, usually the positions of needles on round dials. The pilot's brain, however, is designed to work with pictures taken from a visual world. Before the instrument readings mean anything to it, the brain must transpose and combine them into something like a visual picture. It takes time for the brain to function as a rather slow computer, and the time permitted by modern aircraft grows less and less.'

Commander Hoover believes that the best solution of this problem will be to make the instruments' reports as visual as possible. A simple example is to make the altimeter display a line that rises with increasing altitude, instead of the present clocklike dial, which demands interpretation by the pilot.

The ultimate instrument system, says Commander Hoover, should be completely visual. When the pilot runs into thick weather and loses sight of the ground, a screen before him will light up, showing him a map of the ground below. The moving silhouette of a small airplane will tell him his position, and a luminous curve on the map will tell him how far he can fly without running out of fuel. Another luminous screen will show him a radar view of the terrain ahead, with mountains or other obstacles. These meaning-packed pictures will be the output of a lightweight computer that will do most of the necessary routine thinking. It will take crude information from many sources and turn it into a form that the pilot can use instantly, without interpretation. When fully developed, it will take over the actual flying. The pilot will look at his luminous pictures and decide what he wants to do. He will dial a flight plan into the computer, which will make all the necessary calculations in only a few thousandths of a second and put the airplane on its proper course. Or the pilot can press an overriding button, ask the computer for guidance and work the controls himself.

The details of how all this can be ac complished are still secret. Radar is not the whole story. The luminous screens will probably be flat cathode ray (TV) tubes, and they will get their information from all of the airplane's sensing instruments. The computer will be able to watch more instruments than the pilot's eyes and brain could possibly handle. If asked to do so by the pilot, it could come to a complex decision and act upon it in the second or so that is all future flight speeds will permit.

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