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Experimental study on visual ergonomics of an aircraft cockpit considering an extremely wide range of illuminance conditions

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Abstract

Vision is the main way for pilots to obtain information, and good visual ergonomics are an important support for ensuring aircraft flight safety. The range of illumination changes in the light environment of the aircraft cockpit is very wide, and research on the visual ergonomics of the cockpit needs to consider various extreme lighting conditions. This study conducted visual ergonomics experiments on 15 participants in a full-scale simulated cockpit, examining the accuracy, reaction time, and subjective evaluation of visual tasks under 8 typical environmental lighting intensity levels. The experimental results show that, except for head-up display, the accuracy of visual target interpretation tasks performed by other display devices under different brightness conditions remains at a high level. And as the brightness of the display device increases, the accuracy of interpretation gradually increases, and the reaction time gradually decreases. In terms of subjective evaluation, there is a significant correlation between fuzziness, fatigue, clarity of image symbols, resolution between symbols, comfort of the image, and overall satisfaction with the image, but the correlation with environmental illumination level is relatively low. The experimental results can provide a certain theoretical basis for the design of cockpit lighting environment.

© 2024 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement

1. Introduction

The various devices such as light deflectors, displays, and instruments in the cockpit of an aircraft are complex and diverse. To make correct controls, pilots must promptly and accurately obtain external information, process the obtained information quickly, and then respond correctly in a very short time to ensure flight safety [1]. The main way for pilots to obtain information from their surroundings is through vision, which accounts for approximately 80% of the information obtained [2]. Therefore, the full utilization of visual function will directly affect the improvement of work efficiency and affect the flight safety performance of the aircraft [3]. The main factor affecting the visual function is the lighting environment inside and outside the aircraft cockpit, which will have a direct impact on people at both physiological and psychological levels [4]. Over the years, scholars from various countries have conducted extensive analysis on the impact of different lighting conditions on visual performance.

Fang et al. [5] regarded the accuracy of task testing as a key factor representing work performance. By designing an experimental system to collect various physiological signals, and referring to subjective evaluation results, it was found that computer work fatigue is significantly affected by changes in lighting environment. Wang et al. [6] considered the light environment and thermal environment as a whole, and analyzed the impact of architectural form and outdoor shape on the indoor light environment under the requirements of vision and photobiology. Dianat et al. [7] compared workers’ perception of environmental factors with actual physical measurements by using task area illumination as the main physical measure to determine the correlation between subjective factors and objective indicators. In order to improve visual comfort, Rea and Freyssinier [8] designed color discrimination experiments and paired comparison experiments, and conducted a comprehensive analysis of color features under different light sources by analyzing subjective evaluation results. The study fully considered the influence of light level and found that light level is important for color discrimination. The experimental results showed that all participants’ scores under high illumination were consistently lower than those under low illumination. Boyce et al. [9] analyzed the impact of lighting conditions on visual ergonomics and behavior, and pointed out that the impact at the organizational level is even more significant than that at the individual level. Davis and Garza [10] conducted a study on the visual ergonomics of elderly people in different light environments. They designed relevant experiments to allow participants to complete digital proofreading visual tasks under different illuminances, brightness uniformity, and light source color temperatures. By comprehensively analyzing the participants’ accuracy, reaction time, subjective evaluation, and other results, they proposed illuminances exceeding 100 fc and an environment with high brightness uniformity is a more suitable lighting environment.

Lin et al. [11,12] proposed the Lin Liu model based on de Boer rating (RdeBoer), which can effectively predict the impact of uncomfortable glare on pilots during nighttime flight. They conducted a detailed analysis of how discomfort glare affects pilots’ visual performance by allowing participants to complete corresponding visual tasks, measuring parameters such as reaction time, detection and recognition thresholds, and exploring the effects of variables such as average glare source brightness (Lg) and background brightness (Lb), Solid angle of glare light source from the perspective of the viewer (ω) and angle between glare source and line of sight (θ) on perceived glare.

Rogers et al. [13] analyzed the impact of display brightness on readability in different lighting environments, and designed relevant experiments using Landolt ring as the experimental reference. The study found that the contrast between symbol brightness and background brightness is an important factor affecting readability in low and medium lighting environments, but the impact of contrast on readability is significantly reduced when the environmental lighting is high. Jennie et al. [14] analyzed the influence of parameters such as forward field of view (FFOV) brightness and environmental lighting on the brightness of liquid crystal displays in aircraft cockpit. They designed relevant experiments to determine the feasibility of automatic control of display brightness in external light environments such as dusk dawn and nighttime conditions by recording the range of display brightness values when pilots complete visual target interpretation tasks.

When an aircraft is flying at night or in extremely harsh weather conditions, the cockpit lighting system is particularly important throughout the entire flight process. It is not only necessary to ensure flight safety, but also to provide a comfortable lighting environment for the pilot as much as possible. Designing a comfortable cockpit lighting environment to reduce the visual load of pilots and improve their operational accuracy is the most effective way to ensure that visual functions are fully utilized. There are mainly two types of internal lighting in aircraft cockpit: red light and white light. Due to the better dark adaptation of red light than white light, early aircraft generally used red light. However, mainstream civil aircraft such as Airbus and Boeing currently use blue and white light illumination, mainly due to the fact that red light is inferior to white light in terms of color coding recognition, instrument and light guide plate interpretation, human visual fatigue, and perceived comfort. The control and design of light environment is also a hot research topic for scholars. Kruisselbrink [15] proposed two lighting control algorithms that can adaptively adjust appropriate dimming levels based on the external light environment to achieve indoor target illumination. Hou et al. [16] analyzed the impact of light environment on daytime alertness by testing cognitive performance under different lighting schemes, aiming to explore lighting schemes that can improve performance and alleviate the negative effects of time difference syndrome. Hou [17] also proposed a dimming model that integrates visual performance, visual comfort, and visual facade, which can adjust the luminance of the self-luminous display devices based on the external light environment. Marin-Dunagueda et al. [18] proposed a multi-objective optimization intelligent lighting system design, which can simultaneously adjust the circadian rhythm characteristics and color performance to adapt to different tasks in the indoor environment. By using the circadian rhythm effects, good performance can be achieved in both visual and non-visual aspects. Campano [19] designed three types of intelligent control systems by configuring different switches and dimmers, exploring the application of sensorless lighting control. Fakhari et al. [20]evaluated lighting comfort through subjective surveys and on-site measurements, and analyzed the impact of individual and environmental parameters on satisfaction with lighting levels. Akimov et al. [21] analyzed the effects of window area ratio, window distribution, and glass transmittance on indoor lighting conditions. Zhu et al. [22] analyzed the factors that affect the visual performance of displays in terms of color appearance, and found that both adaptive chromaticity and brightness have a significant impact on the degree of color adaptation. Specifically, under conditions of low adaptive color temperature and adaptive brightness, the degree of color adaptation is lower. Royer et al. [23] proposed that when analyzing the color rendering characteristics of light sources, illuminance (or brightness), chromaticity, color fidelity, gamut area, and gamut shape should be at least independent or control variables.

Overall, current scholars are limited to the specific scenarios they focus on in their research process, and the range of illumination they consider is relatively limited. For example, Kim et al [24] considered the ambient illumination range of 50-5000 lx for the relationship between display brightness and ambient illuminance. And the display dimming model established by Hou et al [17]considered the ambient illumination range of 50-5000 lx. Zhou et al [25] considered the ambient illumination range of 0-100 lx for the optimal display brightness at night. Lin and Huang [26] analyzed the performance of character recognition on displays, considering an ambient illumination range of 200-800 lx. Study of Na and Suk [27] on mobile phone display brightness only considered ambient illuminance below 1 lx. Lin et al.[28] only considered the ambient illuminance at 1-10000 lx in their study of aircraft cockpit display brightness. The range of illumination changes in the cockpit lighting environment is very wide, ranging from very low lighting levels at night (<1 lx) to extremely high lighting levels on clouds during the day (110000 lx), with lighting intensity differences of several logarithmic orders. Therefore, research on the visual ergonomics of the cockpit needs to consider various extreme lighting conditions. The purpose of this study is to design relevant experiments by simulating various light environments and establishing an ergonomic evaluation model for the cockpit lighting system, to evaluate the cognitive performance, operational performance, and subjective perception of pilots affected by lighting conditions on various display devices, in order to determine the optimal lighting visual conditions for the cockpit environment and provide a basis for aircraft cockpit lighting design.

2. Methods

2.1 Experimental device

This experiment was conducted in a full-scale aircraft simulated cockpit equipped with adjustable cockpit lighting environment. The experimental facilities mainly include a movable darkroom, simulated cockpit, and testing equipment. The layout of the experimental facilities is shown in Fig. 1.

The movable lighting darkroom mainly consists of a sunlamp light source device, a dawn/dusk light simulation device, a moonlight simulation device, etc., used to simulate the meteorological conditions of all-weather natural light environments such as day, night, dawn/dusk, etc. Among them, the direct sunlight environment is simulated by the sunlamp light source device with color temperature of 5600 K∼6500 K, and non-direct sunlight environments such as dusk, cloudy days, and nights are generated by dawn/dusk light simulation device and moonlight simulation device with color temperature of 3200 K. The movable darkroom is shown in Fig. 2.

The simulated cockpit is shown in Fig. 3, used to simulate the display and control of flight tasks. The simulated cockpit can be received commands and data from the main control computer (DMP) for display, providing parameters for the test system and supporting ergonomic testing and evaluation of cockpit lighting.

 figure: Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of experimental device.

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 figure: Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. The movable lighting darkroom.

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 figure: Fig. 3.

Fig. 3. The simulated cockpit.

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The cabin can rotate freely 360° along the horizontal plane; According to the Sky brightness distribution model recommended by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE), five typical states of Sky brightness distribution are defined, which are used to simulate the environmental light conditions such as day, night, dawn and dusk for experiment and evaluation. The illumination can range from 0.1 lx to 110 000 lx.

Testing equipment includes brightness meters, illuminometers, etc. The brightness meter is used to test the brightness level of the displayed characters on the cockpit display device; The illuminometer is used to test the cabin environmental lighting level.

2.2 Participants

Each participant is required to complete the visual interpretation task and subjective evaluation task tests for the corresponding experimental variables.

  • • The preliminary experimental population is 2 people, with corrected vision of 1.0 or above and normal color vision.
  • • The formal experimental population is 15 people, all of whom are experienced pilots aged 28-37, with corrected vision of 1.0 or above and normal color vision.
  • • Each participant should participate in learning, training, and experimentation.
  • • The participants did not participate in experimental preparation and did not look at the experimental materials before the experiment.

2.3 Experimental design

This experiment is 8 × 3 repeated two factor designs, with the first independent variable being the eight environmental lighting intensity levels, as shown in Table 1.

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Table 1. Intensity levels of environmental lighting

The second variable is the brightness of the display, which is divided into low brightness, medium brightness, and high brightness. The specific values of display luminance under three levels are determined in the preliminary experiment. The display luminance under different ambient illumination conditions is shown in Table 2.

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Table 2. Display luminance under different ambient illumination conditions (cd/m2)

The experimental indicators of the visual interpretation task in this experiment are reaction time and accuracy (accuracy refers to the completion rate of the visual target interpretation. If the participant cannot find the visual target within 2 minutes, it is recorded as an operational error in the task). In addition to the two objective indicators, the experimental dependent variable also includes subjective perception scores.

There are five types of display devices in the experiment, including large-screen display, auxiliary display, head-up display, up-front control panel, and alarm board. In this experiment, the visual objectives used for participant interpretation are the inherent numbers, symbols, and text in each display device.

2.4 Experimental process

2.4.1 Training

Before the formal experiment, the participants must be trained to accurately grasp the evaluation criteria. In the visual target interpretation task, the participant sat in the cockpit at a distance of approximately 600 mm from the large screen display. Each participant needs to complete 10 training sessions. When the last three interpretations of the participant are completely correct, the training session is finished. Otherwise, continue training until the three consecutive interpretation results are correct.

2.4.2 Formal experiment

Measure the illumination level of environmental lighting, and set the lighting level in advance before experiment. Each participant adapts to the brightness of visual field to be observed for 15 minutes in various environments. Experimenters input settings through the cockpit system to execute the program. Each display device in the cockpit presents a visual image. The participants complete the interpretation tasks of large-screen displays, auxiliary displays, head-up displays, up-front control panels and alarm board, and make oral reports. Record the interpretation results of the participants and the illumination during testing, and complete the subjective evaluation of the participants.

It took approximately 15 minutes for the participant to complete the interpretation task. At the same time, before the participant started the interpretation task, the next participant entered the lighting darkroom for ambient adaptation. The experiment was conducted alternately in this way. After fifteen participants completed the character recognition task under the one kind of ambient illumination condition, the experiment was conducted under the next ambient illumination condition. The total duration of the experiment under each ambient illumination condition was about 4 hours, in which the test time for each participant is about 30 minutes. The specific experimental process is shown in Fig. 4.

 figure: Fig. 4.

Fig. 4. Diagram of experimental process.

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3. Results

3.1 Analysis of objective experimental results

In order to investigate the impact of different brightness of the display device on the visual interpretation performance of participants under certain illumination conditions, three display brightness levels were used in the experiment: low, medium, and high. The differences in visual interpretation performance of participants under these three display brightness conditions were compared. Variance analysis on the accuracy of recognition and response time under different display luminance conditions are performed respectively to analyze the differences in visual performance under different situations, in which Levene’s test was used to test the homogeneity of variance. The results of the variance analysis are shown in Table 3.

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Table 3. Variance analysis under different display luminance conditions

The results of the interpretation accuracy of the five display devices, including the large-screen display, auxiliary display, head-up display, up-front control panel, and alarm board with varying environmental lighting intensity under different display brightness, are shown in Fig. 57. The results of the response time with varying ambient lighting intensity are shown in Fig. 810.

 figure: Fig. 5.

Fig. 5. The results of the interpretation accuracy under low brightness of display devices.

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 figure: Fig. 6.

Fig. 6. The results of the interpretation accuracy under medium brightness of display devices.

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Fig. 7. The results of the interpretation accuracy under high brightness of display devices.

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Fig. 8. The results of the response time under low brightness of display devices.

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Fig. 9. The results of the response time under medium brightness of display devices.

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Fig. 10. The results of the response time under high brightness of display devices.

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Overall, among the four display devices, the large-screen display, up-front control panel, auxiliary display, and alarm board, the accuracy of visual target interpretation tasks performed by the participants under different brightness conditions of the display device under a certain illumination level remained at a high level and there was no significant difference. In this experiment, the tasks that the participants need to complete are relatively simple visual target interpretation tasks, so they have a high accuracy rate. However, considering the trade-off between speed and accuracy, there is a reverse relationship between the speed and accuracy of the operation. For example, when in a hurry to do something, it may be more prone to making mistakes; And when trying to accurately complete something, in order to achieve the expected accuracy, the work speed will be slowed down. Therefore, in the indicator of reaction time, the impact of different brightness begins to manifest.

Specifically, for head-up displays, there are significant changes in accuracy. Under lighting conditions of 10000 lx and 50000 lx, the interpretation accuracy of low brightness is significantly lower than that of medium brightness and high brightness, while the reaction time is much higher than these two levels. The reason may be that the generated glare has a significant impact at low display brightness, leading to a significant decrease in overall performance. In the reaction time results, it was found that as the brightness increased, the accuracy of the character recognition performance of the head-up display gradually improved, while the reaction time gradually decreased.

For the up-front control panel, it was found that under two lighting conditions of 10 lx and 100000 lx, the reaction time of the three different brightness levels was lower compared to the other conditions, indicating that under these two lighting conditions, the visual load was the smallest. In 10 lx, the reaction time of medium brightness is the highest, while in 100000 lx, the reaction time of high brightness is higher than that of medium brightness, and the reaction time of medium brightness is higher than that of low brightness. There may be an interaction between illumination and brightness, and the contrast of text display may vary at different levels. In the reaction time results, it was found that as the brightness increased, the accuracy of the participants’ character recognition performance towards the front control panel gradually increased, and the reaction time gradually decreased.

For large-screen displays, it was found that except under lighting conditions of 10000 lx, the accuracy of the participants’ character recognition performance gradually increased with the increase of brightness, and the reaction time gradually decreased. The possible reason is that as the brightness increases, the visual load accepted by the participants decreases, resulting in the improvement of task performance. Under lighting conditions of 10 lx, the reaction time of medium brightness is significantly slower than that of low brightness and high brightness conditions. Under these conditions, there are significant differences in the reaction time between different participants, resulting in uncertainty in the results. The possible reason is that under the combination of illumination and brightness, the contrast is the worst at medium brightness, so the reaction time is slower than the other two conditions.

For auxiliary displays, compared to the response time of several display devices such as the head-up display, up-front control panel, and alarm board the overall response time of auxiliary displays is relatively large, indicating a higher visual load. Under two lighting conditions of 0.1 lx and 100 lx, as the brightness increases, the accuracy of the participants’ character recognition performance on the auxiliary display gradually increases, and the reaction time gradually decreases, indicating that the increase in brightness reduces visual load.

For the alarm board, the overall response time is the smallest among the above display devices. The possible reason is that the displayed text is red, with the longest wavelength, which is easy to attract people's attention. As the brightness increased, the accuracy of the participants’ character recognition performance on the alarm board, remained stable, and the reaction time gradually decreased. Only under lighting conditions of 50000 lx, the difference is significant, and the reaction time is relatively large at low brightness. Under the same brightness conditions, there is a significant difference in response time at an illumination of 50000 lx.

3.2 Analysis of subjective experimental results

The subjective evaluation results of five display devices, including large-screen display, auxiliary display, head-up display, up-front control panel, and alarm board, under different environmental lighting intensities are shown in Fig. 1115. When conducting subjective evaluation experiments, the display luminance of the five displays were selected as the medium brightness mentioned in Table 2. From the results, it can be seen that the overall satisfaction of environmental illumination is relatively high, indicating that the display status of these displays is relatively good. However, there are certain differences in the five subjective evaluation dimensions of picture blurriness, picture fatigue, symbol clarity, symbol distinguishability, and picture comfort as the index level of illumination change.

 figure: Fig. 11.

Fig. 11. The subjective evaluation results of head-up display under different environmental lighting intensities.

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 figure: Fig. 12.

Fig. 12. The subjective evaluation results of up-front control panel under different environmental lighting intensities.

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 figure: Fig. 13.

Fig. 13. The subjective evaluation results of large-screen display under different environmental lighting intensities.

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 figure: Fig. 14.

Fig. 14. The subjective evaluation results of auxiliary display under different environmental lighting intensities.

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 figure: Fig. 15.

Fig. 15. The subjective evaluation results of alarm board under different environmental lighting intensities.

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Specifically, for head-up displays, the subjective evaluation scores of picture blurriness, picture fatigue, and picture comfort are relatively low, and different lighting conditions have a more significant impact on the evaluation scores of these three dimensions. The picture blurriness is higher under two lighting conditions of 1000 lx and 50000 lx, and there is a significant difference compared to the other six lighting conditions. The picture fatigue of the screen shows a trend of first increasing and then decreasing with the continuous increase of illumination, reaching its peak when the illumination reaches 1000 lx. The picture comfort level is better under only two lighting conditions of 1000 lx and 10000 lx, while it is worse under other lighting conditions.

For the up-front control panel, the subjective evaluation scores for the three dimensions of picture blurriness, picture fatigue and picture comfort are relatively low. Except for the illumination conditions of 50000 lx, all participants indicated that the image was relatively blurry under other illumination conditions. When the environmental illumination conditions are greater than 1000 lx, a strong sense of fatigue is generated. When the environmental illumination conditions are greater than 100 lx, the comfort of the screen is poor. For large-screen displays, there are significant differences in performance in various dimensions between 1 lx illumination conditions and other illumination conditions. The picture blurriness, picture fatigue, symbol clarity, symbol distinguishability, and overall satisfaction are the worst under 1 lx illumination conditions.

For auxiliary displays, different illuminances have a significant impact on eye fatigue. The fatigue sensation generated under the three illumination conditions of 10 lx, 50000 lx, and 100 lx is relatively higher, while the participants are less likely to feel fatigue under the three illumination conditions of 1000 lx, 10000 lx, and 100000 lx. According to objective performance results, the reaction time of auxiliary displays is relatively long, which is because in the settings of these displays, the position of auxiliary displays is relatively secondary, and it is also relatively difficult to capture the content on the display. When the illuminance is 10 lx, 50000 lx, and 100 lx, the subjective performance is significantly lower than other conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the display state under these three illuminance conditions, such as adaptive perception of illuminance and adjusting screen brightness to increase the contrast of character display, or to highlight the size of character.

For the alarm board, participants were not required to rate the symbol clarity in the experiment. Among the other five evaluation dimensions, different lighting conditions had a significant impact on subjective evaluation scores. Under 10000 lx illumination conditions, picture blurriness, picture fatigue, symbol distinguishability, and overall satisfaction are all the worst.

4. Discussion

In order to obtain the relationship between various indicators such as environmental illuminance, image display quality, and overall satisfaction, the correlation coefficient between each indicator needs to be determined first. The correlation coefficient matrix of overall satisfaction, environmental illumination, and subjective evaluation scores for each dimension of the five display devices is shown in Tables 48. Among them, OS - Overall Satisfaction score, EI - Environmental Illumination, PB - Picture blurriness score, PF - Picture Fatigue score, SC - Symbol Clarity score, SD - Symbol Distinguishability score, PC - Picture comfort score.

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Table 4. Correlation coefficients of various indicators of head-up display

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Table 5. Correlation coefficients of various indicators of up-front control panel

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Table 6. Correlation coefficients of various indicators of large-screen display

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Table 7. Correlation coefficients of various indicators of auxiliary display

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Table 8. Correlation coefficients of various indicators of alarm board

From the results, it can be seen that the correlation between each indicator of the five display devices is similar. The correlation coefficients between OS and PB, PF, SC, SD, PC are all greater than 0.5, indicating that overall satisfaction is highly correlated with the above five subjective scoring dimensions. The correlation coefficients between OS and EI are both less than 0.3, indicating that the correlation between environmental illumination and subjective evaluation is not significant. Moreover, variance analysis on the subjective evaluation results of five displays under different environmental illumination conditions was conducted to analyzed the relationship between environmental illumination and overall satisfaction. It can be found that, except for significant differences in the evaluation results of picture fatigue of auxiliary display under different environmental illumination conditions (F = 3.69, p = 0.002 < 0.05), environmental illumination has no significant impact on the overall satisfaction and subjective evaluation scores for each dimension of the five display devices. The results of the variance analysis are shown in the Table 9. In addition, it can be seen from the table that the correlation between the subjective scoring dimensions of PB, PF, SC, SD, and PC is very significant. Through pairwise comparative analysis, many beneficial conclusions can be drawn. The correlation coefficients between PB and PF in auxiliary displays and warning light panels are as high as 0.862 and 0.902, indicating a significant correlation between blurriness and fatigue. The more blurred the display, the easier it is for the eyes to feel tired.

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Table 9. Variance analysis under different environmental illumination conditions

Then, with overall satisfaction as the dependent variable, picture blurriness, picture fatigue, symbol clarity, symbol distinguishability, and picture comfort as independent variables, a regression equation about overall satisfaction needs to be established.

According to the theory of multiple linear regression, the linear regression model with overall satisfaction as the dependent variable is as follows

$$OS = \left[ {\begin{array}{ccccc} {{a_1}}&{{a_2}}&{{a_3}}&{{a_4}}&{{a_5}} \end{array}} \right] \times {\left[ {\begin{array}{ccccc} {PB}&{PF}&{SC}&{SD}&{PC} \end{array}} \right]^T}$$

Among them, ai is the partial regression coefficient (i = 1-5), which represents the average change in the dependent variable when increasing or decreasing by one unit while other independent variables remain unchanged.

According to formula (1), establish a multiple linear regression model for subjective scores of five display devices. The values of partial regression coefficients and regression indicators are shown in Table 10. It can be seen that the regression indicator is very close to 1, indicating a very high degree of conformity of the regression model. The values of the regression coefficients in the regression model can be used to identify the main influencing factors for subjective scores of different display devices. For example, for the up-front control panel, the clarity of the screen is the most important factor affecting subjective scoring.

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Table 10. Multiple linear regression model coefficients and regression indicators

5. Conclusions

This study conducted a systematic study on the interpretation accuracy, reaction time, and subjective evaluation of multiple types of display devices under different environmental lighting conditions through the design of relevant experiments. The experimental results show that the interpretation accuracy of the four display devices, namely the large-screen display, up-front control panel, auxiliary display, and alarm board, has maintained a high level in various lighting environments. As the brightness of the display device increases, the accuracy gradually increases and the reaction time gradually decreases. Considering the adaptability for interpretation, it is better to have a higher brightness level of the display device, but considering the adaptability for switching interpretation between two display devices, a lower brightness is more advantageous. In addition, from the experimental results, it can be seen that the level of environmental illumination has no significant impact on the subjective evaluation of indicators such as picture blurriness, picture fatigue, symbol clarity, symbol distinguishability, picture comfort and overall satisfaction. However, the correlation between subjective evaluation indicators is very strong. The correlation between overall satisfaction and various subjective scoring dimensions is also very significant, but the main influencing factors on overall satisfaction are not consistent for different display devices.

Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank the AVIC Shanghai Aviation Electric Co., Ltd. for its great support of this work.

Disclosures

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Data availability

Data are contained within the article.

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Figures (15)

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of experimental device.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. The movable lighting darkroom.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. The simulated cockpit.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4. Diagram of experimental process.
Fig. 5.
Fig. 5. The results of the interpretation accuracy under low brightness of display devices.
Fig. 6.
Fig. 6. The results of the interpretation accuracy under medium brightness of display devices.
Fig. 7.
Fig. 7. The results of the interpretation accuracy under high brightness of display devices.
Fig. 8.
Fig. 8. The results of the response time under low brightness of display devices.
Fig. 9.
Fig. 9. The results of the response time under medium brightness of display devices.
Fig. 10.
Fig. 10. The results of the response time under high brightness of display devices.
Fig. 11.
Fig. 11. The subjective evaluation results of head-up display under different environmental lighting intensities.
Fig. 12.
Fig. 12. The subjective evaluation results of up-front control panel under different environmental lighting intensities.
Fig. 13.
Fig. 13. The subjective evaluation results of large-screen display under different environmental lighting intensities.
Fig. 14.
Fig. 14. The subjective evaluation results of auxiliary display under different environmental lighting intensities.
Fig. 15.
Fig. 15. The subjective evaluation results of alarm board under different environmental lighting intensities.

Tables (10)

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Table 1. Intensity levels of environmental lighting

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Table 2. Display luminance under different ambient illumination conditions (cd/m2)

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Table 3. Variance analysis under different display luminance conditions

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Table 4. Correlation coefficients of various indicators of head-up display

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Table 5. Correlation coefficients of various indicators of up-front control panel

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Table 6. Correlation coefficients of various indicators of large-screen display

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Table 7. Correlation coefficients of various indicators of auxiliary display

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Table 8. Correlation coefficients of various indicators of alarm board

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Table 9. Variance analysis under different environmental illumination conditions

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Table 10. Multiple linear regression model coefficients and regression indicators

Equations (1)

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O S = [ a 1 a 2 a 3 a 4 a 5 ] × [ P B P F S C S D P C ] T
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