Dr Johannes Ernst was awarded the "Claudius Dornier Jr. Dissertation Prize" for his dissertation on "Creating a Virtual Helicopter Cockpit with an Immersive Head-Mounted Display" at the opening of the German Aerospace Congress 2024 (Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress, DLRK) in Hamburg on 30 September. The young scientist is conducting research at the DLR Institute of Flight Guidance in the field of pilot assistance systems.
Challenges for helicopter pilots
His dissertation explores how modern head-mounted displays (HMD) can improve the helicopter pilots’ situation awareness and increase flight safety in situations where the natural outside vision is degraded.
What sets this work apart from existing research is that it explicitly considers non-see-through HMDs besides the established see-through devices. The developed “fully virtual cockpit” replaces the entire natural out-the-window view as well as the flight-deck instruments by a virtual view seen through the HMD. Four pilot-in-the-loop studies confirm the enormous potential of the developed approach and lead to the conclusion that the exploration of this topic should be continued.
