Ruggedized Haptic Feedback Touchscreens for Aerospace Applications

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Touchscreens in aerospace cockpits have been established for many years, following the consumer trend experience of smart phones and tablets. However, an adoption barrier for both usability and safety considerations has been the "in turbulence, at night, during an emergency" scenario. Aerospace grade touchscreens currently provide no tactile feedback and also require visual attention on the surface. Industry and academic research has explored various approaches to haptics via various transducers. Korry believes these technologies can be integrated into existing display and bezel designs to provide presence detection before touch, and force feedback both of position within screen and confirmation of touch intent. This student team worked to research and select a tactile feedback method that works to meet these goals, taking into consideration the aerospace application requirements, and then work to integrate that into an existing display module demonstrator. The student team then attempted to run the demonstrator integrating the feedback mechanism through a series of human factors evaluations to attempt to confirm usability, reliability, and reduction in pilot workload. Desired outcomes this student team worked towards included better understandings of the benefits and limitations of the current state of the art and the ability to demonstrate to Korry's customers future capabilities in this area that improve aircraft systems safety, usability, and user experience. Anticipated deliverables this student team worked towards included a brief trade study of haptics technologies and design trades, along with the decision criteria for the selected approach. Any selected implementation produced would then be prototyped and integrated with an existing Korry touchscreen display. Finally, the student team worked to confirm the effectiveness of the prototyped technology and identify areas for future research through human factors evaluations.

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