I-VISION · Immersive Semantics-based Virtual Environments for the Design and Validation of Human-centred Aircraft Cockpits

New tools are needed for the design and evaluation of aircraft cockpits with a high level of flexibility and low-cost. Virtual prototyping has been widely used. A great challenge today is though to provide methods and tools that seamlessly integrate low-level 3D geometries with domain-specific knowledge and intelligence.i-VISION will combine methods and technologies from 3 distinct areas of research, namely Human Factors, Semantics and Virtual Reality, into advanced design and validation tools. It’s S&T objectives are:•Analysis of Human-Cockpit Operations. Advanced human factors methods will be used for recording and analysing human procedures and tasks within a virtual cockpit. Semantic Web technologies will facilitate the simultaneous access to and processing of both geometric information and human factors related domain-knowledge.•Definition and implementation of a Semantic Virtual Cockpit. Semantic Web technologies will be used to enrich a pure geometric data set with semantic annotations. Intelligence and knowledge about procedures and cockpit concepts will be added to the VR-based simulation.•Development of a Virtual Cockpit Design Environment. An advanced VR-based environment will be delivered, which will serve as a reusable and low-cost simulation testbed for experimenting with various configurations and set-ups of virtual cockpits.i-VISION developments will support human factors design and validation activities in aircraft cockpits during the early phases of the product life-cycle. They will help integrate domain knowledge and intelligence in the virtual cockpits, thus turning them into more cohesive, comprehensive and reliable design tools. Thus, they will help reducing significantly the development costs and time-to-market.i-VISION Consortium includes representatives from all major R&D stakeholders, including end users, research partners and IT vendors.i-VISION has been endorsed by the European Aeronautics Science Network.