FAA Office of Aerospace Medicine
Civil Aerospace Medical Institute

Report No: DOT/FAA/AM-19/20

Title and Subtitle: Combined Vision Systems Literature Review

Report Date: September 2019

Authors: Kratchounova D, Newton D

Abstract: Improving safety during low-visibility operations is one of the most critical challenges in aviation. Toward this end, the aviation community has been working to develop flight deck display technologies that improve the pilot's ability to acquire visual information in situations where natural vision is compromised.

The Combined Vision System (CVS) is one such technology. CVSs utilize data taken from imaging sensors onboard the aircraft (e.g., millimeter wave radar, forward-looking infrared), as well as terrain and obstacle databases, combine them, and present them in a superimposed fashion on a flight deck display. Some of the operational benefits of CVSs include improved tracking performance, reduced flight-path error, and reduced workload.

Future research should address pilot performance with a CVS in specific operational constructs (e.g., head-down vs. head-up displays), the effects of CVS display minification on pilot performance, and head-down to head-up transitions while using a CVS.

Key Words: synthetic vision, enhanced vision, low visibility, sensor fusion

No. of Pages: 33