Aircraft cockpit display interface (CDI) is one of the most important human-machine interfaces for information perceiving. During the process of aircraft design, situation awareness (SA) is frequently considered to improve the design, as the CDI must provide enough SA for the pilot to maintain the flight safety. In order to study the SA in the pilot-aircraft system, a cockpit flight simulation environment is built up, which includes a virtual instrument panel, a flight visual display and the corresponding control system. Based on the simulation environment, a human-in-the-loop experiment is designed to measure the SA by the situation awareness global assessment technique (SAGAT). Through the experiment, the SA degrees and heart rate (HR) data of the subjects are obtained, and the SA levels under different CDI designs are analyzed. The results show that analyzing the SA can serve as an objective way to evaluate the design of CDI, which could be proved from the consistent HR data. With this method, evaluations of the CDI design are performed in the experimental flight simulation environment, and optimizations could be guided through the analysis.
