March 2011 archive

Orientation in Aviation

Man’s desire to soar into the sky led to the departure from his natural habitat. This resulted in a mismatch between the orientation demands of the new environment and his innate ability to orient. Motion stimuli in aviation differ in magnitude, direction, frequency and in the degrees of freedom from that experienced on the ground. …

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Orientation in Aviation: Vision

Vision is the most important sensory organ of orientation. There are, in fact, two distinct visual systems. First is the ‘Focal’ (central) vision. This is concerned with recognition and identification of an object and in general answers the question of “what”. This comprises of the central 30° of the visual cone. Focal vision is responsible for …

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Orientation in Aviation: Vestibular Apparatus

The vestibular apparatus is about the size of a pea, located in the inner ear. Within this small volume are sensory receptors, which are stimulated by angular accelerations as low as 0.05°/s2 (0.9mrad/s2) and linear acceleration of less than 0.01 G (0.1 m/s2).

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Lost It, Situational Awareness!

Situational Awareness “can be conceived of as the pilot’s internal model of the world around him at any point in time” [1]. Conventional flight requires the pilots to glean information from the instrument panel and other auditory inputs, interpret it and draw inference to maintain their situational awareness and in turn ensure safe flight. And …

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Decision Making in Aviation – The Twain shall Meet

The vital difference between classical or normative Decision Making and Naturalistic Decision Making is that whereas the former prescribes the correct way to make a decision, the latter describes the process of Decision Making, without prescribing a way to make the decision [1]. The process of normative (classical) Decision Making conventionally focuses on criteria and …

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