Study On Comprehensive Evaluation Of Electronic Flight Bag(EFB) Availability

According to the airworthiness and considerations of Electronic Flight Bag(EFBs)issued by CAAC,the way of EFB displaying operational information should have good usability.The usability evaluation of EFB is an important part of the airworthiness evaluation of EFB.The study of EFB usability evaluation standards and methods can provide a meaningful reference for CAAC’s EFB airworthiness evaluation,as well as technical guidance for EFB optimization and redesign.In this paper,based on the investigation of users’ needs,combined with the relevant regulations of civil aviation and the usability evaluation index of electronic equipment,the suitable usability evaluation index is screened and selected,and the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method based on AHP-CRITIC is used to verify the index system.The usability of EFB was evaluated by the questionnaire.Three self-designed questionnaires were used to evaluate the usability of pilots and relevant experts.The results show that EFB meets the needs of pilots.They think EFB has better usability,but they get the problems that pilots care about: battery power supply of hardware,waypoint and information content of user interface,error,operation and workload in application.Finally,two experimental schemes are designed to verify usability.The first experiment evaluates the availability of EFB under four routine tasks.The results show that there are some usability problems that can be improved in different task interfaces of EFB,but the feeling of EFB is pleasant and relaxed.The second experiment is based on the special situation of EFB human-computer interaction experiment,which is carried out in the EFB interactive display and control visual system.Its purpose is to evaluate the workload of using EFB in the cockpit,and then find usability problems.The results show that: the first entry time,the length of scanning path,the average pupil diameter of left and right eyes has significant differences on the workload,which will have a positive impact on the use of EFB.Combined with the workload questionnaire survey results show that EFB does not cause uncontrollable workload,EFB has good usability in the simulator.On the basis of the above research,the following conclusions are obtained(1)In this study,a set of EFB usability evaluation index system is formed,which conforms to the general usability evaluation principles and civil aviation requirements.(2)The results show that the existing EFB has good usability.(3)EFB human-computer interaction platform was established and EFB usability test was completed.Five usability indexes,such as consistency,workload and memorability,were verified by experimental data.The overall use experience was evaluated by questionnaire data.(4)The behavioral performance,subjective evaluation and eye movement parameters based on routine task and special situation task are collected and analyzed.The results show that the use of EFB will not increase the workload of pilots,and it meets the basic requirements of the use of airborne electronic equipment.