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NASA Reduces Airline Accidents with Augmented Reality Headset

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March 21, 2012

NASA Reduces Airline Accidents with Augmented Reality Headset

By Anuradha Shukla, TMCnet Contributor


NASA has developed an Augmented Reality headset designed to reduce airline accidents due to poor weather and overcrowding at airports.

The product was developed by researchers at Langley Research Center in Virginia and search is now on for a commercial partner to market this groundbreaking device in the US and elsewhere.

The new Augmented Reality headset does not have a name yet and has several features, according to Bob Yirka from physorg.com.

The product has been designed to fit over the head, and includes an eyepiece allowing the pilot looks through. NASA’s new Augmented Reality headset enables pilots to easily read pieces of paper placed on cabin walls and includes voice recognition software to allow the pilot to communicate with the system orally.


This product is touted to let pilots see through fog, glare, darkness and other hazardous weather conditions that may cause an aircraft to crash.

Kevin Fogarty from itworld.com notes that although GPS or global positioning systems give the exact location to the pilots, they fail to provide information about obstacles such as buildings and mountains.

NASA’s headset doesn’t use any GPS or terrain data that aren't already available, but incorporates data from high-precision efforts to map the Earth's surface such as the Space Shuttle's Radar Topography Mission in 2000.

"If pilots are not familiar with the airport, they have to stop and pull out maps," said Trey Arthur, an electronics engineer at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia. "This display, in the new world where these routes are going to be digital, can tell them what taxiway they're on, where they need to go, where they're headed, and how well they're tracking the runway's center line."

NASA was recently in news for offering college and university students a chance to help design a deep space habitat.




Edited by Juliana Kenny







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