Date of Award

Fall 12-2017

Access Type

Thesis - Open Access

Degree Name

Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering

Department

Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

Richard P. Anderson

First Committee Member

Borja Martos

Second Committee Member

Richard Prazenica

Third Committee Member

Glenn Greiner

Abstract

A low-cost wearable Commercial-off-The-Shelf (COTS) Augmented Reality (AR) Head-Up Display (HUD) system is designed, successfully reduced to practice, and flight tested. The system is developed based on the need for a technology that improves loss-of-control (LOC) safety in the General Aviation (GA) sector. The accuracy of the flight-path based system is determined to be within a degree of the truth source. The repeatability of the data from the COTS system is excellent. A complementary filter is proposed for air data flow angles and successfully flight tested for straight and level flight, dynamic maneuvering, and atmospheric turbulence, provided that a reasonably accurate lift curve is determined. A novel accelerometer method is proposed for estimating the relative pitch attitude estimation of the pilot’s head. The method is evaluated on the ground and in flight, and is shown to be superior to other commercially available solutions. The HUD system is shown, through various test points, to make flying more intuitive and efficient, thereby affecting the GA LOC. In all the performed tasks, experienced and inexperienced pilots are used to fly the aircraft and evaluate the technology.

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