The information in Green Displays Parameters like airspeed, heading scale, climb descent rate, angle of attack, etc
A pilot needs to change his line of vision repeatedly to keep track of information like airspeed, heading scale, climb descent rate, angle of attack, etc.
Dr Vinod Karar & his team,
CSIR-Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, Chandigarh
The research: Using optics, material sciences, electronics and precise designing to develop an advanced head-up display for aircraft.
Consider a pilot in a fighter aircraft, flying at 2,000 km per hour. All the controls inside the cockpit are placed either besides the pilot’s seat or at positions for which he needs to divert his attention from his ‘forward vision’. A pilot needs to change his line of vision repeatedly to keep track of information like airspeed, heading scale, climb descent rate, angle of attack, etc.
For commercial airlines, which mostly operate on auto-pilot mode, this is not a big issue. But for a fighter plane, taking aim at a target, half a second of distraction can make a big difference. Pilots flying fighter aircraft, all over the world, now depend on an instrument called head-up display, or HUD, to overcome this problem.
The HUD is essentially a display box that relays information from all the instruments installed in the cockpit right in front of the pilot’s eyes. The aim is to ensure that the pilot need not divert his attention to access any information.
When the pilot is looking out of the cockpit, he has, what is called, an infinity vision. When he looks back inside, he has to change his focus, even if the object is in the same line of vision. Even this causes distraction.
With an HUD, even while looking outside the cockpit, a pilot has complete access to information inside the plane. Imagine reading a message on your phone without taking your eyes away from the road. This may not be possible. But you can read a board at the back of a bus in front of you.
HUD achieves something similar through very sophisticated instrumentation involving a combination of optics, material sciences, electronics and precise designing. The HUD is a tapered structure in metal encasing, about 1.5 feet in length, 0.5 feet in width and 0.9 feet in height at the front. It is fixed in the cockpit in front of the wind-shield around 400 mm from the pilot. It weighed up to 22 kg initially, but now with improvisations, the weight has been reduced to around 12 kg.
HUDs are not new. The first ones were developed almost three decades ago. In India, we have been building it since late 1990s. The HUDs we are in the process of testing weigh half of earlier ones, have greater accuracy, and consume less power. The HUDs being developed at our laboratory are at par with international standards.
Our laboratory is one of few designers/manufacturers of HUDs for aircraft across the world. Our instruments are currently used in the Light Combat Aircraft and the Intermediate/Advanced Jet Trainers. We are now also trying to venture into commercial airlines.