The Short Haul Civil Tiltrotor is a NASA program created to solve technical barriers to the production of a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. This aircraft is designed to offload short commuter traffic from the major commercial airports. Because this vehicle is in the concept phase MIDAS has the potential to make a particularly valuable contribution.

SHCT research with MIDAS is being conducted under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRDA) with Boeing Helicopters.
Initial efforts consisted of importing existing geometric data into the MIDAS environment. From this a simple "flyby" demo was created where the MIDAS operator can view an approach and landing by the SHCT into a concept vertiport. The landing can be viewed from outside the aircraft, or through the eyes of the pilot. The subsequent efforts involved performing a legibility analysis of the cockpit multi-function displays under different seating configurations, and creating visibility analyses of the cockpit.

The first complete simulation was a simple comparative study. We chose to compare two simple procedures in two different tiltrotor cockpits. The procedure was setting a new heading. The two cockpits were the V-22 FSD, and a hybrid tiltrotor cockpit based on the Boeing 747-400. The complete study is currently access limited.

POC- Adolph Atencio