Overview

As we were saying in a previous chapter, advanced electronics is rapidly gaining space in the cockpits of all but the smallest airplanes. While the glass (LCD) displays are supplanting the old steam gauges, GPS satellite receivers are plotting the airplane position in real time on colorful maps depicting terrain elevations and, with additional equipment, up-to-the-minute satellite weather information too. Pilots can enter an entire flight plan in the navigation system and then follow their path on the moving map, just like in a video game. The interaction with these new instruments, though, is becoming the next big challenge. Just as with computer applications, each instrument is controlled by a different menu system and a set of knobs and buttons to allow the pilot to provide the inputs quickly and, hopefully, intuitively. However, the limited space in the cockpit has so far imposed serious limitations on the type and number of such input devices, which for the most part at least in the first generations have been mimicking the knobs and buttons of the primitive VHF radios.

If you have a GPS navigation system in your car and you have tried to dial in a street address in a foreign city (say Bahnhofstrasse, 17, Munich) by twisting and turning that little knob while driving on a highway well, you know exactly the type of challenge I am talking about. Keyboards are the logical next level of input interface for several advanced avionics (aviation electronics) systems. They are already common...