Aeroflightdynamics: USRA Team supports the conclusion of the US Army Degraded Visual Environment Mitigation (DVE-M) Program
November 2020
USRA Aeroflightdynamics Human Systems Interface (HSI) Software Development Task Lead Nathan Mielcarek and his team have successfully supported the conclusion of the US Army Degraded Visual Environment Mitigation (DVE-M) program after 7 years of development and testing. The objective of the DVE-M program is to develop and evaluate technologies that have the potential to enable intentional rotorcraft operation in degraded visual conditions using a combination of pilot cueing, sensor technologies, and advanced flight controls. Over the length of the DVE-M program (2013-2020), the test aircraft (a modified EH-60L Blackhawk) was flown in a multitude of weather conditions such as fog, rain, dust, and snow located at Moffett Field, CA, Yuma Proving Ground, AZ, Germany, Switzerland, and Fort Eustis, VA.
The HSI team was primarily responsible for the pilot cueing area by leading the development of the Integrated Cueing Environment (ICE) cockpit display software and the 360° situational awareness and obstacle avoidance software. This software not only provides primary flight information to the pilots but also presents the autonomous flight control guidance and obstacle avoidance cues. These cues are rendered using a combination of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional symbols on both a flat panel display and head tracked/head mounted display to provide the pilots better situational awareness of their environment, especially in degraded weather conditions when there is little to no visual references outside the cockpit. Additionally, spatial audio and tactile cueing of sensor-detected obstacles were used in a layered approach to increase the situational awareness for the pilots.
The advanced flight controls played a big part of the DVE-M program in the last few years by using real-time sensor data fused from multiple sensor systems such as LIDAR and RADAR. This fused data was used in the Obstacle Field Navigation (OFN) and Safe Landing Area Determination (SLAD) algorithms as part of the Mission Adaptive Autonomy (MAA) project, to generate safe flight paths and landings in various terrains and weather conditions. The USRA HSI team worked closely with the MAA engineers in order to provide the pilots with the guidance cues and flight path trajectories for safely and accurately monitoring the autonomous flight behaviors.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the capstone flight test events scheduled this year were unfortunately canceled but the program was able to complete the remainder of the test events in clear air flying around the Fort Eustis, VA area. The DVE-M technologies will continue to be integrated and evaluated as part of the next US Army program, Holistic Situational Awareness - Decision Making (HSA-DM), which will be examining current and future technologies capable of supporting design, development, integration, and demonstration of systems intended to manage aircraft crew member cognitive workload.
