French avionics supplier Thales is showing a next-generation cockpit concept demonstrator that provides most of the pilot displays and functions via a single touchscreen covering the entire main instrument panel.

The objective is to create a flightdeck that can be individually tailored to pilots' needs at different points in their mission and thus improve the interface between the aircraft and crew.

Instruments, controls, keyboards as well as maps, performance charts and synthetic vision displays can be freely moved across the screen, changed in size, hidden or brought up again in an intuitive manner similar to touchscreen-based consumer devices such as the Apple iPhone and iPad.

The idea is to turn the entire instrument panel into a gapless, interactive surface. This would not need to be flat but could involve bends, for example, to include the forward part of the central pedestal, which houses the flight management systems and radio control panels on many aircraft today.

Thales argues that, as the operating environment and avionics systems are becoming more complex, for example with four-dimensional navigation tracks in future air traffic management procedures, current generation cockpits will fail to deliver the increased volume of data in any easily accessible manner. Flightcrew will thus not be able to exploit the systems' full capabilities.

The new cockpit, named Odicis, is to process the increased amount of data and present only the relevant information to the flightcrew so that they can concentrate on flying the aircraft.

The concept is suited to commercial, business and military aircraft, both fixed and rotary wing, and could enter the market in 2020-25, said Thales.

An obvious concern for an aircraft largely controlled through a single touch screen, is redundancy. Dennis Bonnet, director cockpit innovation department, said that the demonstrator employs five projectors and that if individual ones failed, the remaining equipment can still keep the entire screen functional.

Projector technology, however, is not his main worry, according to Bonnet. The most pressing issues of the project lie in determining the system architecture.

Source: Flight Daily News