Aircraft interactive navigation display design using touchscreen technique

To improve the situational awareness of the pilots the Electronic Flight Information System (EFIS) has been used for many years within the cockpit of every modern airliner or military aircraft. As the amount of functions integrated into the displays is increasing the human-machine interface (HMI) becomes a very important or even vital part of the avionics design process. To reduce the workload of the pilot the spatial displacement should be reduced. Nowadays multifunctional buttons or softkeys has been used around the displays of a modern aircraft. In certain circumstances to match the function and the appropriate button can be difficult. The use of touchscreens could be an easy way to minimize this spatial displacement and opens up several new possibilities on the navigation display (ND) to simplify the usage of it. The proposed paper is intended to present how the touchscreen features are used especially on the ND at the development flight simulator of the Institute of Flight mechanics and Flight Control at the Technical University of Munich (LFM). The ND and the other displays has been designed and developed in tight co-operation between the LFM and the Department of Aircraft and Ships at the Technical University of Budapest.