This paper introduces a display concept for helicopter obstacle awareness and warning systems. The key feature of the concept is the integration of a 360-degree coplanar orthogonal top view in the egocentric perspective of a helmet mounted see-through display. The concept intends to provide obstacle awareness while pilots are looking outside. The concept should further improve the situational and spatial awareness as well as the workload of helicopter pilots when operating in challenging surroundings. The display concept is applied to two helicopter offshore operations and its specific obstacle situation. The first operation represents a hoist operation at the lower access point of an offshore wind turbine. The second regards an offshore platform landing operation. The paper depicts the two use cases, related work concerning obstacle awareness and warning systems, and recapitulates situational awareness plus the properties of orthogonal coplanar in comparison to the properties of perspective representations. Thereafter the two main aspects of the developed HMI concept were presented, i.e., the combination of the exocentric orthogonal coplanar top view with the egocentric perspective view, and secondly three ways for the integration of the top view inside the helmet mounted display. The implemented HMI design represents work in progress, i.e., looking forward to develop an optimal holistic and balanced display concept featuring helicopter obstacle awareness and warning systems.
