Although flight programs have started implementing flight simulation in their curriculum, ab-initio pilots are currently trained mainly in a real aircraft, leading to increased fuel consumption, cost, and incidents and accidents. At the same time, the looming international pilot shortage requires us to increase the number of pilots without sacrificing safety and quality. Enabling the use of VR simulation in the realm of flight training will allow programs worldwide to use high fidelity, low footprint simulators and pre-designed flight scenarios in their curriculum, decreasing the cost of training and increasing its efficiency in terms of total time taken to obtain a certificate.

This research follows pilots over the course of their training and provides them with opportunities to prepare and practice their flights in both FAA-approved, physical, flight simulators and experimental VR flight simulators. We aim to compare the performance and outcomes of the two groups to make recommendations for the design and use of VR equipment in aviation. The research will advance our understanding of how humans learn in complex VR environments, validating VR as a training device option and therefore reducing the cost and time of highly advanced training requiring the use of multiple skills simultaneously.

This research is funded by the National Science Foundation through a CAREER award entitled "CAREER: Using virtual reality to advance research and learning and promote positive skill transfer in complex environments with applications in enhanced flight training."

Traditionally, lessons learned from prior accidents have been the primary driver of advancements in aviation safety. However, with recent technological advancements and the resulting availability of flight data, the approach to analyzing trends has shifted from reactive and proactive to predictive. This shift allows us to identify potential risks before they become hazards and take preventive measures to enhance flight safety. We employ machine learning techniques to assess how effectively student pilots execute their assigned tasks. By analyzing flight parameters, we can provide semi-real-time feedback on the pilot’s performance as well as on flight safety and quality. This digital twin approach to flight assessment provides an objective and comprehensive evaluation of flights and an opportunity for students to understand their current progress, performance, and plan of action for future progress and performance and safety improvements. It increases standardization in debrief feedback without adding to the instructor’s workload. This approach also improves the pilot certification process, ensuring that pilots meet the required standards for safe operations, reducing accidents.

With our transition to Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), we expect new stakeholders to operate in the national airspace. This transition presents challenges but also opportunities for the entire system. One challenge is the lack of weather information products for operators of vehicles at lower altitudes, such as Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehiles and Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS). At the same time, the increased number of operations at lower altitudes can provide access to unprecedented data.

Our research on weather information aims to use weather data from UAS low-altitude operations through "flying weather stations" fully instrumented for weather data collection or through more traditional missions in platforms equipped with weather sensors to communicate information with other airspace users.

This project is funded under a NASA University Leadership Initiative Award entitled " WINDMAP: Weather-Intelligent Navigation Data and Models for Aviation Planning."