A spatial disorientation detector device to enhance a pilot´s telepresence about unknown environments

A pilot´s misperception of an aircraft´s attitude, position, or motion, called spatial disorientation (SD), is discussed. The ways in which SD is caused are discussed. A device called the spatial disorientation detector (SDD) is discussed. This device consists of a Kalman filter which is built on an analog computer, and it has an internal model which describes the human´s perception of the attitude of the aircraft. This Kalman filter model is implicitly in error because it has an internal model which emulates the human´s vestibular system (which is not a perfect motion sensing system). The output of the Kalman filter is the pilot´s perception of the attitude of the aircraft (not the true attitude). If inertial gyro information can be integrated to yield the true attitude of the aircraft, the difference between the true attitude and the perceived attitude yields an error vector which can be used as an alarm indicator to the pilot