Posted Nov. 21/09

by Elizabeth Howell

Chris Herdman, professor of cognitive science and psychology, operates his Cessna airplane simulator, which was designed and built to better understand how pilots perform in high-stress situations.

Buried in a building on Carleton's campus, a tiny four-seater airplane makes its way over the hilly Kootenays in southern British Columbia.

It's hard to tell, but the blue skies and green trees are nothing more than pixels on a screen.

At the controls of this Cessna airplane simulator is Chris Herdman, a professor who has spent 20 years at Carleton straddling psychology and cognitive science. Now, he's focusing on how to replicate driving and flying on a computer. "I've always been fascinated by how people learn and perform in high-stress situations, and aviation certainly has its share of them," Herdman says.

His research team experiences this daily in several simulators scattered around Carleton's Centre for Advanced Studies in Visualization, Simulation and Modeling (VSIM) — a building and research unit for which he is the scientific director.

What Herdman and his team are working to do now is bring this simulation to other people — specifically, the spotters in search-and-rescue missions. "Spotters aren't able to get much training in airplanes, so we're hoping this simulator will bring them more of that experience," Herdman says.

The Cessna simulator in VSIM includes a separate screen for a spotter to sit at. The screen projects a different view as the spotter scans the ground in a grid, looking for the people he or she needs to rescue. But the view moves at the same pace as the airplane — just like what happens in real life. "We can even make the radio communications spotty," Herdman adds, "or put some fog around the hills to simulate searches in challenging conditions."

Herdman is in talks with the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association to integrate simulator training into its curriculum sometime in 2010.

What makes the project feasible, he says, is the low cost of the technology involved. The simulator's Cessna is an old cockpit pulled from a crash and refurbished with help from high-school students in Napanee. Students at South Carleton High School put together the gantry supporting the projectors.

"It's a part of our community outreach and also, it allows the students to learn about the program while they're still considering careers," Herdman says.