Tear apart my concept: A wearable for Spatial Disorientation

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Joshua-0922

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Joshua Na
Follow up to my post a couple of weeks back about spatial disorientation.

I have a concept I want you guys to tear apart before I find out it's a terrible idea in the cockpit.

The Idea: An app on your mounted phone/EFB detects an unusual attitude(similar with dynon d30), and sends a haptic cue to a smartwatch-sized wearable telling you which way to roll wings level.

Don't tell me if you like it. Tell me where it fails:

  1. Wearability: Do you fly with watches/wearables now? Does stuff on your wrist bug you near the yoke/stick? If not the wrist, where?
  2. Haptics vs. Audio/Visual: I picked vibration over lights or audio. In actual IMC, would you trust a vibration, or just tune it out?
  3. False Alarms: A device that nags during a standard 30-45° bank is worse than useless. What’s your tolerance level before you throw it out the window?
  4. The Real Need: Forget my idea. If a wearable could do one thing to keep SD from killing you, what should it actually do?
No links, no sales pitch. Just looking for honest pilot feedback while it's still cheap to pivot. Thanks.
 
I'd like to know what you are going to do on a phone alone that is going to give you a reliable "horizon" indication. Every viable option that I've seen uses an external solid state gyro unit. The accelerometers in the phone aren't going to cut it. And you'd have to mount the gyro unit fairly rigidly. Sticking the thing in the pilots shirt pocket so he can feal it jiggle, is probably not going to fit the bill.
 
How does it know the pilot is experiencing SD other than the general attitude of the aircraft? During my worst SD experience, the airplane was straight and level, my inner ear was not.

If you get past that, what is that cue going to do to help the pilot ignore their own internal gyro and trust the instruments. Recognizing you are in trouble is one thing, overcoming it is incredibly difficult. I don't know how a vibrating phone or watch is going to tell me otherwise.

Honestly I think one of the bigger fixes is glass cockpits. Having that big color screen in front of you presenting a large representation of the horizon seems to help, in my opinion. Doing it off a bunch of 2 inch round mechanical indicators, and trying to figure out if one or more is lying, is much harder.
 
Joshua-0922 said:
Follow up to my post a couple of weeks back about spatial disorientation.

I have a concept I want you guys to tear apart before I find out it's a terrible idea in the cockpit.

The Idea: An app on your mounted phone/EFB detects an unusual attitude(similar with dynon d30), and sends a haptic cue to a smartwatch-sized wearable telling you which way to roll wings level.

Don't tell me if you like it. Tell me where it fails:

  1. Wearability: Do you fly with watches/wearables now? Does stuff on your wrist bug you near the yoke/stick? If not the wrist, where?
  2. Haptics vs. Audio/Visual: I picked vibration over lights or audio. In actual IMC, would you trust a vibration, or just tune it out?
  3. False Alarms: A device that nags during a standard 30-45° bank is worse than useless. What’s your tolerance level before you throw it out the window?
  4. The Real Need: Forget my idea. If a wearable could do one thing to keep SD from killing you, what should it actually do?
No links, no sales pitch. Just looking for honest pilot feedback while it's still cheap to pivot. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Since you asked to tear apart the idea, here is my take. Pilots crash planes due to SD not because there isn't enough information in the cockpit - but because they get overwhelmed by the information and give up. So one more alarm or buzzer is not going to bring back the pilot's mental state. However, I might suggest something similar for fuel management. The fuel status indicators in cockpits are awful, and during a long cruise it is easy to forget time. An obnoxiously loud alarm that comes on when you are eating into your fuel reseve could be useful. But that also can be useless unless the pilot tells the app what the fuel is on takeoff.
 
midwestpa24 said:
How does it know the pilot is experiencing SD...?
Click to expand...
I would just stop and ask that question by itself.

A pilot can experience SD flying straight and level. A pilot can be way out of straight-and-level attitude intentionally and not experiencing SD. A pilot can be in a slight pitch and/or bank and not realize it due to SD.

How is any sensor going to know when the pilot is experiencing SD, unless you've figured out how to read his/her mind?

If the aircraft and its instruments are otherwise fully operational, the pilot already has the information (s)he needs to overcome the SD.

I don't see a helpful product/service being proposed here.
 
Always love new ideas, but I'm having a hard time with this one too.

A big fundamental of instrument flying is asking the pilot to tune out all other senses, and focus only on what they see on the instrument panel. We train pilots that their body will mislead them.

For this to work you would be asking a pilot to tune out all other body sensations, except for this specific one. I think it runs the risk of becoming more confusing than helpful.
 
Joshua-0922 said:
Follow up to my post a couple of weeks back about spatial disorientation.

I have a concept I want you guys to tear apart before I find out it's a terrible idea in the cockpit.

The Idea: An app on your mounted phone/EFB detects an unusual attitude(similar with dynon d30), and sends a haptic cue to a smartwatch-sized wearable telling you which way to roll wings level.

Don't tell me if you like it. Tell me where it fails:

  1. Wearability: Do you fly with watches/wearables now? Does stuff on your wrist bug you near the yoke/stick? If not the wrist, where?
  2. Haptics vs. Audio/Visual: I picked vibration over lights or audio. In actual IMC, would you trust a vibration, or just tune it out?
  3. False Alarms: A device that nags during a standard 30-45° bank is worse than useless. What’s your tolerance level before you throw it out the window?
  4. The Real Need: Forget my idea. If a wearable could do one thing to keep SD from killing you, what should it actually do?
No links, no sales pitch. Just looking for honest pilot feedback while it's still cheap to pivot. Thanks.
Click to expand...
I don’t believe you understand spatial disorientation. Would the pilot receiving visual indications and unable to interpret and recover all of a sudden be able to recover because he was receiving hepatic indications through the skin? I think not.
 
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Loss of control due to spatial disorientation is a skill/training issue, not something that just happens randomly one day. Don't see how a "warning" device will help unless it can also recover for you (i.e. through the autopilot).
 
Another proposed solution in search of a problem.
 
Jim_R said:
I would just stop and ask that question by itself.
Click to expand...
x2. Or is it three? How does the wearable detect the pilot is experiencing spatial disorientation? An unusual attitude by itself is not an indicator of spatial D.

Garmin’s blue (level) button even tacitly admits the pilot is the only one that can recognize SD.
 
I don't think it can give you any more reliable information than a Stratus and an iPad. If I'm in a spin and I look down at a wristwatch that's saying turn right, I don't know that that's any more helpful than instrumentation built into the aircraft.
 
Am I the only person integrating the New Mexico King Air crash and GPS reliant systems in aviation?
 
When I first read the subject line I thought you meant something like a HUD built into smartglasses which might be interesting, especially with synthetic vision. Unless I'm misunderstanding the type of thing you're proposing, we've already got functionality like that built into existing panel mounted avionics and apps like foreflight. Garmin's GFC 500 autopilot for example has flight envelope protection that gives you a sort of force-feedback on the yoke to prevent excessive banking/pitching. Many glass panel setups and even my little GI-275 attitude indicator have synthetic vision.

To answer your questions directly...

1. Wearables- I do sometimes wear an apple watch and it doesn't interfere with anything.
2. Vibration might be an iffy thing to notice in an emergency. I do notice the taps on my watch for notifications but under stress I suspect I'd tune it out especially given that I'm used to watch notifications being non-critical things.
3. False alarms in aviation are a bad thing. They often lead pilots to disable the alarm or train them to ignore it, this has actually been a contributing factor in some accidents.
4. I like the idea of a smart glasses HUD that would duplicate my primary instruments- attitude, airspeed, altitude, and heading/CDI. What would be really cool is if could handle synthetic vision but it would need to be really accurate and reliable- I could see a pilot coming to rely on something like that and failing to cross-check with their panel instruments and getting into trouble.
 
Joshua-0922 said:
The Real Need: Forget my idea. If a wearable could do one thing to keep SD from killing you, what should it actually do
Click to expand...

Reset my inner ears. That’s where SD is rooted. SD arises from a disagreement between the pilot’s senses and the actual aircraft motion. You can’t detect SD by only sensing the aircraft’s orientation.
 
Joshua-0922 said:
The Real Need: Forget my idea. If a wearable could do one thing to keep SD from killing you, what should it actually do?
Click to expand...
It should overlay terrain (synthetic vision) on to the pilot's view of the windscreen.
 
Short version: no chance, Paddles.

Long version: For credibility's sake regarding the following comments, I'll just say that this is an aspect of my particular area of expertise and aeromedical/military career.

1. If fixing spatial-D was as simple as an app or a wearable, we'd have done it years ago. I applaud your initiative and desire to contribute. That's fantastic. However, the first step in any aeromedical or aerospace physiology (or aerospace engineering, undoubtedly) initiative is to educate yourself on what has already been tried. Spatial cueing (and bigger picture situational awareness) has been studied extensively using a range of visual, auditory, and even proprioceptive methods (e.g., a vest that vibrates different parts to indicate directionality) and the results are found in modern military and civilian cockpits.

2. The most dangerous kind of SD is the unrecognized kind. Once it is recognized, it can usually be effectively resolved with existing instruments and potentially some level of automated flight-control inputs if the SD is disabling. Remember, SD is a mismatch of how the pilot perceives the aircraft to be oriented in space versus how it actually is. Aircraft attitude alone cannot distinguish between an intentional flight profile and an unintentional one. Determining the moment when a pilot becomes disoriented is very, very difficult. Best automatic mitigations are envelope protection and various visual/auditory warnings for unexpected attitudes/deviations, which are already available in many modern GA cockpits on existing instrumentation using ADAHRS. I don't see that a watch/app will bring anything new to the table. Worst case, it may be a distractor at a critical moment, as turning your head and looking down at a watch is an automatic movement which sets up the pilot for a nasty vestibular illusion.

Avoidance of, rather than recovery from, spatial-D is the ideal scenario. Synthetic vision, terrain overlays, enhanced attitude indications, flight path indicators and so forth can all assist with this in IMC or dark-night flights, along with education of aviators on vestibular and visual illusions. Envelope protection exists as a mitigator and is available even in light GA aircraft. Heck, my little Cherokee has a nice blue "LVL" button that is the final defense against incapacitating spatial-D. For my money, a reasonably-priced HUD (preferably with synthetic vision linked to the avionics) would be the best thing for GA pilots. Create that and I'll be first in line to buy it.
 
Oh, there're many brutal advice, but i like it!
You all were right to push back on the last post. It forced me to go back and rebuild my core assumptions from scratch. Here is where I landed—and I’d value you tearing this version apart, too.

1. The phone-as-sensor idea is dead.I tried detecting attitude from a rigidly mounted phone. Built a demo, flew it, and it failed miserably—gyro drift accumulated even with GPS and filtering. Lesson learned; a phone can't do it. I’m now looking at pulling attitude data directly from a dedicated source like a Stratus or Dynon D3.

2. It's a risk flag, not a mind-reader.You were right that aircraft attitude alone can’t tell you if a pilot is disoriented. I’ve dropped the claim that this "detects SD."

Instead, the device will flag when the aircraft enters a high-risk flight regime (based on US Army angular-velocity data). To add a layer of human telemetry, I'm looking at adding a small sensor to the headset to track head movement—the idea being that erratic or sudden head movements during high angular velocity might hint that a pilot is losing the picture.

The harder point you raised—that recognizing trouble isn't the same as overcoming it—is the one I'm still honestly wrestling with.
That brings me to where I actually need your judgment now:
  • If not a wrist buzz, what actually gets through? When you are completely saturated and entering a graveyard spiral, what cue breaks the spell? Would a peripheral visual cue (like a light inside your headset/visor) land better than a haptic buzz, or just add to the sensory overload?
  • How do you feel about a headset sensor? Does putting a tiny sensor on your headset sound acceptable, or is it an immediate dealbreaker for comfort/utility?
  • For the steam-gauge flyers: For those flying older panels without a modern autopilot or glass, is an unrecognized-attitude warning something you’d actually find useful, or do you feel your instrument scan already covers it?
Genuinely grateful—your roast on the last thread changed this project more than months of my own work did. Tear away.
 
Joshua-0922 said:
I'm looking at adding a small sensor to the headset to track head movement—the idea being that erratic or sudden head movements during high angular velocity might hint that a pilot is losing the picture.
Click to expand...
I don't think "might hint" is a sufficient threshold for usefulness. An alert for "Are you spatially disoriented?" every time I turn my head while banking is useless.

Joshua-0922 said:
  • How do you feel about a headset sensor? Does putting a tiny sensor on your headset sound acceptable, or is it an immediate dealbreaker for comfort/utility?
Click to expand...
I think it's a non-starter for me. I wear a lightweight headset (QT Halo) because I don't want mass on my head. A sensor is going to need power, which means a battery. If it's otherwise wireless, there will be bulk for the electronics and transmitter/receiver interface. If it's wired, that's also a hassle I'm not interested in.

I've been flying for 15 years and have (knock on wood) never suffered SD. Ultimately, I'm simply not going to go through the hassle of maintaining some sensor wart on my headset on the off chance that one day if I do get into an SD situation that this thing might actually help (which is far from guaranteed).

I don't see this concept ever evolving into a product I would use.
 
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In my experience (very limited, compared to almost all others here) the onset was a major case of vertigo (black hole departures). I had enough sense not to make any sudden moves: the airplane was already flying; pitch, power, and attitude were where they needed to be; there really were no outward signs of SD. But my head was swimming. I don’t know of an external method of sensing something like that just to tell me something I already knew. Training had made me “trust the instruments”, to keep the dirty side down, and eventually my brain and inner ears re-synced and I was back to normal.

SD can be very sneaky, I’m not sure how a wearable device would sense it. And really, if it gets bad enough to result in unusual attitude recovery we’ve all been trained in that. Is a device that buzzes your wrist going to give you any more information than what’s already in front of you and that you’re, theoretically, trained in how to use?

I think it’s a great idea, but my reptile brain can’t figure a way to get there.
 
Joshua-0922 said:
Oh, there're many brutal advice, but i like it!
You all were right to push back on the last post. It forced me to go back and rebuild my core assumptions from scratch. Here is where I landed—and I’d value you tearing this version apart, too.

1. The phone-as-sensor idea is dead.I tried detecting attitude from a rigidly mounted phone. Built a demo, flew it, and it failed miserably—gyro drift accumulated even with GPS and filtering. Lesson learned; a phone can't do it. I’m now looking at pulling attitude data directly from a dedicated source like a Stratus or Dynon D3.

2. It's a risk flag, not a mind-reader.You were right that aircraft attitude alone can’t tell you if a pilot is disoriented. I’ve dropped the claim that this "detects SD."

Instead, the device will flag when the aircraft enters a high-risk flight regime (based on US Army angular-velocity data). To add a layer of human telemetry, I'm looking at adding a small sensor to the headset to track head movement—the idea being that erratic or sudden head movements during high angular velocity might hint that a pilot is losing the picture.

The harder point you raised—that recognizing trouble isn't the same as overcoming it—is the one I'm still honestly wrestling with.
That brings me to where I actually need your judgment now:
  • If not a wrist buzz, what actually gets through? When you are completely saturated and entering a graveyard spiral, what cue breaks the spell? Would a peripheral visual cue (like a light inside your headset/visor) land better than a haptic buzz, or just add to the sensory overload?
  • How do you feel about a headset sensor? Does putting a tiny sensor on your headset sound acceptable, or is it an immediate dealbreaker for comfort/utility?
  • For the steam-gauge flyers: For those flying older panels without a modern autopilot or glass, is an unrecognized-attitude warning something you’d actually find useful, or do you feel your instrument scan already covers it?
Genuinely grateful—your roast on the last thread changed this project more than months of my own work did. Tear away.
Click to expand...

I would never discourage anyone from doing anything.

A pilot that gets SD and enters a situation that is going to get them harmed is not going to recover because of a gadget.
My opinion only is they can only use their skills to recover. I am instrument rated and fly in IMC and at night and I have the skill (knock on wood) to realize that feeling that I am flying sideways or in a bank.
As soon as I get that feeling, I glue my eyes to the AI and fly it like it is a video game. Usually within a couple seconds, the feeling goes away and I am mentally oriented with the aircraft.

My thinking is someone who hasn't mastered that (or their preferred method) is going to fly it into the ground.
If a pilot gets in a spin in IMC, another buzzer is just going to be an additional stimulus in this lucid dream state they have entered.

I am not discouraging you. I hope this experiment leads you to solving the problem with a great solution. However until you solve this, the current recommendation is go out and train in IMC with a skilled instructor and learn to detect the onset of that disorientation feeling and practice re orienting yourself. Be a pilot.
 
If you have spatial disorientation, you're IFR. If you are IFR and have the rating, you have certified instruments in your scan that tell you which way is up. No additional alert is needed, or wanted. An extra distraction while flying IFR would be a minus, not a plus. If you're IFR and don't have the rating (or training), you're likely headed for the grave along with your wearable.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
My opinion only is they can only use their skills to recover. I am instrument rated and fly in IMC and at night and I have the skill (knock on wood) to realize that feeling that I am flying sideways or in a bank.
As soon as I get that feeling, I glue my eyes to the AI and fly it like it is a video game. Usually within a couple seconds, the feeling goes away and I am mentally oriented with the aircraft.
Click to expand...
That right there. We don't spend 40 hours learning instrument flight for nothing; it's to train our brains to trust the instruments and ignore spurious signals from the inner ear. We go from full-panel work to partial-panel, sometimes getting down to just the needle and ball and airspeed. We learn to ignore any instrument that does not agree with the others. We even use the tachometer (in a fixed-pitch-prop airplane).
 
The excerpt below is informative.

The human eye provides visual and spatial orientation, which is responsible for providing about 80% of the sensory inputs needed to maintain orientation. The vestibular system within the inner ear contributes 15%. Proprioceptive sensory inputs from receptors located in the skin, muscle, tendons, and joints account for 5% of the sensory information used to establish orientation.[1]Complex coordination between these sensory inputs is then translated and interpreted by the brain.[2] Misinterpretation or inaccuracy of these three sources of information can lead to “sensory mismatch,” resulting in a variety of visual or vestibular illusions.

Source: Physiology Of Spatial Orientation, (Rachel K. Meeks; Jackie Anderson; Paul M. Bellh
 
Not sure it would help due to things others have already pointed out, but it seems to me a tone in the ears that incrementally gets louder in the ear on the high wing in a bank might actually help prevent SD. It theoretically could give that missing cue to keep your ear properly synced. Especially if it’s on all the time and at a subtle but hearable volume where it could become an unconscious sensory input.
 
Joshua-0922 said:
Oh, there're many brutal advice, but i like it!
You all were right to push back on the last post. It forced me to go back and rebuild my core assumptions from scratch. Here is where I landed—and I’d value you tearing this version apart, too.

1. The phone-as-sensor idea is dead.I tried detecting attitude from a rigidly mounted phone. Built a demo, flew it, and it failed miserably—gyro drift accumulated even with GPS and filtering. Lesson learned; a phone can't do it. I’m now looking at pulling attitude data directly from a dedicated source like a Stratus or Dynon D3.

2. It's a risk flag, not a mind-reader.You were right that aircraft attitude alone can’t tell you if a pilot is disoriented. I’ve dropped the claim that this "detects SD."

Instead, the device will flag when the aircraft enters a high-risk flight regime (based on US Army angular-velocity data). To add a layer of human telemetry, I'm looking at adding a small sensor to the headset to track head movement—the idea being that erratic or sudden head movements during high angular velocity might hint that a pilot is losing the picture.

The harder point you raised—that recognizing trouble isn't the same as overcoming it—is the one I'm still honestly wrestling with.
That brings me to where I actually need your judgment now:
  • If not a wrist buzz, what actually gets through? When you are completely saturated and entering a graveyard spiral, what cue breaks the spell? Would a peripheral visual cue (like a light inside your headset/visor) land better than a haptic buzz, or just add to the sensory overload?
  • How do you feel about a headset sensor? Does putting a tiny sensor on your headset sound acceptable, or is it an immediate dealbreaker for comfort/utility?
  • For the steam-gauge flyers: For those flying older panels without a modern autopilot or glass, is an unrecognized-attitude warning something you’d actually find useful, or do you feel your instrument scan already covers it?
Genuinely grateful—your roast on the last thread changed this project more than months of my own work did. Tear away.
Click to expand...
AI detected.
 
Once disorientation occurs, you need to hit the LEVEL button. But you don't likely have one if you are having SD.
 
Anything suggested here (with the exception of the “level button”) still requires the pilot to manually fix the problem. Including the stability that’s built into most airplanes in the solution seems far more reliable.
 
Joshua-0922 said:
The Idea: An app on your mounted phone/EFB detects an unusual attitude(similar with dynon d30), and sends a haptic cue to a smartwatch-sized wearable telling you which way to roll wings level.

Don't tell me if you like it. Tell me where it fails:
Click to expand...
Yeah... NO.

So you're saying that if I'm in an unusual attitude I'm supposed to...
A) Take my eyes off the instruments to look at my watch?
B) While I'm in an unusual attitude and may or may not also be spacially disoriented, I'm supposed to interpret haptic cues?
C) I'm supposed to believe my phone over a certified flight instrument? (Maybe some day, but NO phone censors are not there yet.)

I like the creative thinking, but no, not something worth spending your time on.
 
Given this is a topic dear and near to my heart, I'm afraid you're too late. I've already submitted my patent for the Spatial D wearable. without divulging the secret sauce, it provides sensory alerts when the bank angle exceeds L/R 30* and pitch +/-10*. PM me for payment info and I'll ship to CONUS. See marketing demo below:


:biggrin:
 
Maybe something that recognizes cross controls and decaying airspace and says, “Hey, dumbass!!” Wait, that’s a CFI!
 
Flyhound said:
If you have spatial disorientation, you're IFR.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily, and it's super important that pilots understand that SD can occur in all weather conditions and flight regimes. Flicker vertigo, waterfall illusion, haze, false horizons, vector illusions, accelerations (somatogravic illusions), Coriolis illusion (pen dropped in the cockpit), and even simple distraction can lead to SD in VFR conditions. Agree that on a clear VFR day, it's easy to visually re-cage yourself and hopefully never get SD in the first place, but being VFR is no guarantee against SD.
 
TCABM said:
The human eye provides visual and spatial orientation, which is responsible for providing about 80% of the sensory inputs needed to maintain orientation.
Click to expand...
Way back in some dusty neurons I have a vague recollection of a prioreceptor stimulation system that underwent testing in a T-34 that was nicknamed "magic fingers," but the memory is dim and unreliable. I definitely recall NASA getting good results from a projected horizon line in the cockpit that essentially went canopy rail to canopy rail that worked the 80% side above.

I wouldn't touch a COTS system without a thorough understanding of the system and it's failure modes and effects and system validation and verification. I feel the same way about COTS synthetic vision, but I sometimes think I'm in the minority.

Nauga,
and DO-254
 
hindsight2020 said:
Given this is a topic dear and near to my heart, I'm afraid you're too late. I've already submitted my patent for the Spatial D wearable.
Click to expand...
Great minds. I was going to suggest a device that requires the pilot to announce "Attitude verified, on-altitude, on-airspeed, on-course" every 30 seconds and electrocutes them if they fail to do so. The Pavlov Relia-Pilot was going to take the world by storm.
 
Is it just me, or has there been a run of new members coming here proposing some great new app, device, service they came up with for pilots, without knowing much of anything about how pilots work? Can't tell if trolls, AI bots, or entrepreneurs without a clue but looking to make a buck off of "rich" pilots.
 
AvNavCom said:
Great minds. I was going to suggest a device that requires the pilot to announce "Attitude verified, on-altitude, on-airspeed, on-course" every 30 seconds and electrocutes them if they fail to do so. The Pavlov Relia-Pilot was going to take the world by storm.
Click to expand...
Have your people call my people, I think we've got some synergistic opportunities. I was going to post in the heart rate thread that I'm looking for volunteers to flight test a supplemental biometric transducer. I was thinking of converting a trailer hitch ball into a body core temp sensor, once implemented it seems trivial to add a little high voltage "pop" to get the pilot's attention. As a bonus it also doubles (triples?) as a negative g restraint which improves under stress.

Nauga,
and his third eye
 
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