The U.S. Army has trialled 3D spatial audio systems on two Black Hawk helicopters to lower cognitive workload on pilots.
The U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory (USAARL), the military science body for the U.S Army, has delivered two 3D spatial audio systems on Black Hawk helicopters at the U.S. Army Aviation Centre of Excellence, which serves as the army’s primary aviation training site.
This new system aims to recreate directional cues, allowing pilots to perceive each radio frequency or intercom channel in its own position in the pilot’s auditory field. Four simultaneous radio conversations became four voices perceived as emanating from four different directions during test flights, instead of four voices arriving from the same location. Previous studies on pilot workload have consistently identified that audio management, the act of separating and prioritising multiple communication sources at once, has played a significant part in situational awareness degradation and error under stress. Pilots typically juggle multiple audio channels, including crew intercom, tactical radio nets, navigational audio cues, and automated systems alerts all at once. The 3D spatial audio system aims to address this problem by reducing the cognitive load on pilots. During evaluation, Captain Brandon Allen, research pilot, USAARL, praised the system’s ease of identification: “When you are up on four radios, 3D spatial audio splits up all those radios in your head and you can distinguish who is talking to you.”
The helicopters took more than 231 hours of work and two days of flight evaluations before the system was declared as ready for operational assessment. The new system aims to overcome the limitations of current aviation headsets which deliver every audio source to the same point in the listener’s perception.
The U.S. Army’s research organisation aims to test the technology in flight training environments with the goal of potentially expanding its use into wider adoption. Colonel Thomas Summers, commander, USAARL, said: “The goal is to get 3D spatial audio into the hands of the end users - the pilots. We want pilots to fly with it, use it, break it, and provide us feedback so we can iterate on this technology and continue to improve and solidify how it’s best used in Army aviation.”
The research trajectory aims for 3D spatial audio in Army aviation applications aims to look beyond the Black Hawk helicopter, ensuring that future helicopters can benefit from the research conducted with Black Hawk airframes.
Pictured: Black Hawk helicopters. Photo credit: GreenOak/Shutterstock.com