Head-Mounted Display for business aircraft

On The Radar: Head-Mounted Display Business aviation has long been at the forefront of new technology-most of it developed to improve pilots' situation awareness and reduce their workload-that would be the envy of commercial airline crews. An example is synthetic vision, a 3D rendering of runways and terrain that gives pilots a sunny-day virtual view of the flight path in front of them. The first FAA-certified application of such a system was available as part of the Gulfstream Aerospace PlaneView flight deck in 2009. It could be as many as five years before such technology begins to make its way into commercial aviation as part of a voluntary safety upgrade movement spurred by the government and the Industry Commercial Aviation Safety Team. What sort of technologies might be on business aviation's horizon? One possibility is head-mounted displays (HMD) for pilots, which could be retrofitted in existing cockpits and for aircraft in development. Thales' TopMax HMD, still in the prototype stage, is attracting a lot of interest. It provides pilots with a wider field of view, improving their ability to land in difficult conditions, such as a crosswind, while keeping their eyes out of the aircraft. TopMax was adapted from existing HMD technology for military pilots, and part of Thales' advanced cockpit concept for commercial aircraft-particularly business jets, which have no space for a conventional HUD. TopMax uses a display and tracker system built into a single assembly with a standard headset. A camera on the helmet tracks reflective, coded stickers attached to the roof of the cockpit. The technology may be certificated by the middle of next year and ready for market by 2017.