The good folks at Langley Research Center in Virginia have developed a new Augmented Reality handset for the commercial pilots to overcome the crashes that incur due to bad weather and other unavoidable situations during flight. This is an effort to reduce the pilot’s confusion of what’s happening outside during flight. The glasses project all the required information in front of the pilot’s eyes, without interrupting the real world view.
The glasses project essential information like actual runway, during smoggy and foggy situations. Now, after the pilot lands the plane successfully on the runway, it displays information about the runway like centerline, slippages and such information. The AR headset is designed to give all the information that the pilot ever needs. This is very similar to something we saw in Google’s Project Glass last week.
The AR headset fits just over the head and has an eyepiece through which the pilot can look into. The device also has a gyroscope built into it and also some sensors that are capable of reading pieces of paper that are placed on the cabin and it amazingly orients itself, giving the flexibility for the pilot the ability to look into it in the same direction he is looking currently. What’s more? The pilot can actually talk to the device to fetch information.
Source: NASA / Synthetic Vision Display