For the inspiration behind the next generation of avionics, just look around you; it is to be found in the consumer electronics we use every day. The touchscreen interactivity and broadband connectivity of today’s smart phones and laptops is poised to enter the flight deck.

The signs are already here. Garmin International has introduced touchscreens with its G3000 integrated flight deck, selected for the HondaJet and PiperJet light business jets. In addition to wide-screen liquid crystal displays, the G3000 has a pair of vehicle management system controllers with touch-sensitive screens and desktop-like menu icons.

Garmin says the user interface draws on its experience designing automotive consumer products, and eliminates buttons, switches and most knobs. Instead, the infrared touchscreen technology and menu icons allow for “intuitive” control of flight, radio and audio management systems, synoptic displays and other functions.

The next step is multi-touch technology, familiar to any iPhone user and becoming available on laptop computers. This allows the user to manipulate the display image using two or more fingers to move, rotate, magnify or shrink objects. Avionics applications of multi-touch control are moving out of the laboratory and into product development.

In May, European industry and academia kicked off a 30-month research project to develop a commercial-aircraft cockpit where the entire instrument panel, including center console, is a single touchscreen display. Led by Thales Avionics and funded by the European Union under its 7th Framework research program, the Odicis (One Display for a Cockpit Interactive Solution) project involves nine partners from seven countries.

Odicis aims to take a single large seamless cockpit display to a technology readiness level of 3-4, requiring laboratory validation that the architecture and performance meet safety-critical avionics requirements. The concept is targeted initially at the smaller cockpits of business and regional jets, but the technology must be adequate for use in larger aircraft.

A single display with no lost space between screens is expected to make it easier to implement a task-oriented cockpit with better partitioning of workload between the flying and non-flying pilots. The display would be more easily reconfigured for different phases of flight. Lower development and maintenance costs are other potential benefits.

A single display surface conforming to the complex contours of a cockpit would be created by tiling the images produced by multiple rear-projection systems. The Odicis team envisages using either digital micro-mirror device (DMD) or liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCoS) projectors with high-intensity light sources such as lasers or LEDs.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter now under development was originally to have a single cockpit display using dual-redundant DMD projectors, but the technology proved not to be ready for prime time and instead the aircraft is being fitted with side-by-side touchscreen LCDs that are operated as if they were a single display surface.

The Odicis display will have multi-touch capability allowing both pilot and copilot to simultaneously manipulate virtual controls and displays, such as terrain maps and keyboards. The team will also look at haptic technology to provide tactile feedback. This could involve vibrating the screen where the pilot touches it to differentiate between the functions of virtual controls by providing different tactile sensations.