Pro Line's New Bag Of Tricks -- Touch Them For Yourself

The Pre-Oshkosh news conferences are pretty rare at AirVenture... in fact, there was only one on the schedule for this week. Rockwell Collins took the opportunity to unveil the industry’s first touch-control primary flight displays for business jets and turboprop aircraft, which will be available on future applications of the company’s Pro Line Fusion avionics system.

“These displays demonstrate our focus on empowering pilots with natural head-up, eyes-forward interfaces,” said Colin Mahoney, vice president of Sales and Marketing for Rockwell Collins. “Touch-controlled, icon-based controls on the main displays help keep pilots’ attention focused up and forward for safer and more efficient flying. For example, when programming the flight management system, instead of entering information on a console-mounted keypad, pilots can redirect to a graphically displayed waypoint or destination with a single swipe of a finger.” Other simple gestures directly on a map display would control panning and zoom features.

Another benefit of the new displays is a streamlined learning cycle for pilots transitioning to a new aircraft type, enabled by the user-friendly, icon-based graphical user interface.

FMI: www.rockwellcollins.com, www.aero-tv.net, www.youtube.com/aerotvnetwork, http://twitter.com/AeroNews