Future Work
The plan for the next stage of the project is split into three main parts, the first being to finalise the Unusual Attitudes work.
Another branch of the research is to investigate the 'Approach To Hover' phase of flight. Previous work conducted within the FST Research Group has hypothesised that visual approaches use tau guidance. This project will investigate further whether this is true for a range of visual conditions and, if so, whether the tau relationship breaks down at any point - such findings would provide valuable information to draw up guidelines to inform the design of a vision aid for this specific phase of flight.
The third branch of the research will investigate a clinical decelerative manoeuvre. The design of the manoeuvre will be based around the part of tau theory which hypothesises that tau (the instantaneous time to contact) does not depend on explicit knowledge of the size of the obstacle, its distance away or relative velocity but solely on the rate of 'looming' of the obstacle on the retina. The clinical decelerative test will therefore be set up so that the only reliable information the pilot has is the looming of the target object.