The advantage of a head-up auditory display was evaluated in an preliminary experiment designed to measure and compare the acquisition time for capturing visual targets under two conditions: standard one-earpiece presentation and two-earpiece three-dimensional (sD) audio presentation. Twelve commercial airline crews were tested under full-mission simulation conditions at the NASA - Ames Crew - Vehicle Systems Research Facility Advanced Concepts Flight Simulator. Scenario software generated targets corresponding to aircraft that activated a traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) aural advisory; the spatial auditory position was linked to the visual position with 3D audio presentation. Results showed that crew members using a 3D auditory display acquired targets approximately 2.2 s faster than did crew member who used one-earpiece headsets, but there was no significant difference in the number of targets acquired.
Abstract