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A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

military.com

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Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#51

Post by throwawayboise »

mrtksn wrote: post #35
danielEM wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet a bus driver, but we're heading that way. Slowly.

I disagree, I think the destination is "elevator operator" and we are half way there. Automating flight has quite a bit of low hanging fruits and Airbus has become the first harvester out there. The rest opposed at first, but the only logical path forward is automating people out of the systems. Yes, we had the 737MAX thingy but even then arguments for re-humanisation of aircraft controls didn't catch much traction.

737MAX would not have crashed if it were being flown autonomously, as the entire MCAS system would have been unnecessary. It was there to meet regulations regarding control feel for human pilots.

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#52

Post by throwawayboise »

dmoy wrote: post #36
toss1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar striking phenomena happened when I shaved my head instead of haircuts. I was immediately very aware of every slight motion of air even in what seemed like still rooms, or generated by my motion, not even walking. It was like I had a new sensor upgrade. Almost more interesting is that it did not fade or degrade over the months that I kept that (non-)hairstyle. The tactile sense can be a very high-bandwidth i…

So I actually buzz my hair really short for high power rifle season so I can feel the wind better. I'm also balding, so that helps. It mostly boils down to using it as a "don't pull the trigger, the wind just did something funky" sensor. Granted about half the time I end up throwing a baseball cap on it because not getting sunburn/skin cancer is more important to me than a few points at 600 yards, but it does help.

Sunscreen?

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#53

Post by pugworthy »

tintor wrote: post #14
nvahalik wrote: post #8

This makes me wonder. I get car-sick when I'm a passenger in a car. Sometimes it takes an hour. Sometimes 10 minutes. However, if I'm riding in a convertible with the top down... I haven't gotten car-sick yet. Is the wind "fixing" the problem with my brain?

Motion sickness is body's way to protect itself against eating hallucinogens by mistake. Large mismatch between what your inner ear is feeling about your motion, and what your eyes perceive as your motion, imply possible hallucinogens, so your body is trying to make you throw them up. Humans haven't evolved riding in vehicles. Interior of car is not moving much relative to you, but your inner ear feels movement.

You've defined it via the general mismatch in a good way. Sea sickness is your eyes saying, "I'm not moving", but your inner ear saying, "Oh yes we are". VR sickness is your eyes saying, "We are moving" and your inner ear saying, "No we're not"

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#54

Post by ordu »

throwawayboise wrote: post #16
nvahalik wrote: post #8

This makes me wonder. I get car-sick when I'm a passenger in a car. Sometimes it takes an hour. Sometimes 10 minutes. However, if I'm riding in a convertible with the top down... I haven't gotten car-sick yet. Is the wind "fixing" the problem with my brain?

For me it helps to have as much of a view of the outside as possible. Feeling the wind helps also. If I'm in the back seat looking mostly at the interior of the car, my inner ear senses motion but my eyes tell me I'm stationary. I think those conflicting inputs are the cause of most motion sickness. Much less of an issue for me when I'm in front looking out the front window.

> Much less of an issue for me when I'm in front looking out the front window.

And it never an issue when your are behind the wheel. In this case nothing can surprise you, because any acceleration or rotation not just predicted by your brain, but directly caused by it.

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#55

Post by sandworm101 »

dylan604 wrote: post #21
sandworm101 wrote: post #4

>> It can take pilots up to 30 seconds to reorient themselves, a long time while behind the stick of a jet aircraft. Their is an old chopper pilot saying: the faster the aircraft the slower the pilot. You think 30 seconds is a long time in a fighter jet at 30,000 feet? Try 30 seconds when trying to land helicopter on the deck of a pitching ship. A 747 flies at basically the same speed as a fighter (~mach 0.8), in man…

By design, a 747 pilot is a glorified bus driver that flys in a fairly straight path. Nobody talks about quick thinking until they do. Captain Sully ring any bells? That wasn't a 30k feet either. When an airliner has something go wrong, it's hundreds of people that are affected and will always make the news. By design, a fighter pilot does a heck of a lot more than a airline pilot. When a pilot does something wrong,…

Sully is spoken about, but not always in the best light. There is a line of though that an automated system could well have landed that aircraft. Other lines of thought blame reliance on checklists, that a quick abandonment of checklists might have been more effective. But imho the unsung hero of that incident remains the airliner, designed by human engineers, that was able to survive landing on water and remain afloat long enough for an evacuation. The design and regulatory decisions that created that ability happened long before the bird strike.

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#56

Post by oh_sigh »

clort wrote: post #19
samstave wrote: post #2

Good article. I can't help but wonder why way-finding / path-finding vibrational orienteering vests aren't a thing yet. You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc.

I remember reading about an experiment where they gave somebody a belt which would vibrate at the north side and the subjects became very spatially aware would never get lost. Even when they were taken at night, blindfolded and driven around for like half an hour they could point to the way home without really thinking about it. ah seems to be a product now: https://point-iot.eu/success-story/navibelt/

This is a skill you can teach yourself through mindfulness alone. I've never been driven around blindfolded, but I can enter a building, go through a big maze of hallways, and be able to tell you which direction north is.

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#57

Post by t0mas88 »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #27

One of the surprises I got after being locally anesthetized for a surgery, was that I could no longer localize my arm in space without looking at it. Proprioception is heavily based on the flow of air against our skin and hair. Some flowmeters are based on that principle, using a tiny mechanical hair that vibrates as air flows over it, and I've always felt robotics should just dump a whole bunch of them on their movi…

I've always learned that proprioception is a standalone thing, not based on the air moving over the skin etc, but really just your own nervous system telling you the position of your joints. Which together tells you where your arm is.

As far as I know it would theoretically still work in a vacuum with your eyes closed.

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#58

Post by [deleted] »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #27

One of the surprises I got after being locally anesthetized for a surgery, was that I could no longer localize my arm in space without looking at it. Proprioception is heavily based on the flow of air against our skin and hair. Some flowmeters are based on that principle, using a tiny mechanical hair that vibrates as air flows over it, and I've always felt robotics should just dump a whole bunch of them on their movi…

[deleted]

Re: A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

#60

Post by skykooler »

pugworthy wrote: post #53
tintor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motion sickness is body's way to protect itself against eating hallucinogens by mistake. Large mismatch between what your inner ear is feeling about your motion, and what your eyes perceive as your motion, imply possible hallucinogens, so your body is trying to make you throw them up. Humans haven't evolved riding in vehicles. Interior of car is not moving much relative to you, but your inner ear feels movement.

You've defined it via the general mismatch in a good way. Sea sickness is your eyes saying, "I'm not moving", but your inner ear saying, "Oh yes we are". VR sickness is your eyes saying, "We are moving" and your inner ear saying, "No we're not"

I wonder whether having something to blow air on you in particular directions as you move in VR might help with that, then?
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