The next generation of cockpit displays.
Date: 2012-09-19
Institutions: Directorate-General for Research and Innovation
Subjects: aeronautical industry, air transport, aircraft, crew

The next generation of

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cockpit displays

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DIEHL Aerospace), research centres (IMEC) and 
universities (TEI Piraeus, University of Malta, 
and University of Denmark) providing a range 
of expertise and experience.

“We tried to define the cockpit of the future,” 
says ODICIS Dissemination Manager Johanna 
Dominici, who is also an Innovation Engineer at 
Thales Avionics. “This system enables pilots to 
interact with the multi-touch display covering 
the full control panel. It means the cockpit 
becomes  a  single  interactive,  intuitive  and 
configurable display area centred on the crew. 
And it can be adapted to all types of aircraft: 
planes and helicopters.”

W ith  it s  all-around  touchscreens, 

fut ur ist ic  desig n,  a nd  da z zling 
interactive displays, it looks more 
like a flight deck from the Star Wars or Star 
Trek movies than anything in use today. Yet 
the ODICIS concept is a vision for a very real 
application: a cockpit that airplane or helicopter 
pilots might use within a decade from now.

ODICIS, or One Display for a Cockpit Interactive 
Solution, is a unified multi-touch screen that 
replaces the floor-to-ceiling buttons, levers, 
and displays used in aircraft instrument panels 
today. It could revolutionise the way pilots fly, 
simplifying the many navigational commands 
and controls into a single interactive, tactile 
surround screen.

ODICIS is a European Union research project 
backed by €3.6 million in EU funding. It brings 
together nine partners from seven EU member 
states,  including  large  companies  (Thales 
Avionics,  Alenia  Aeronautica,  Alitalia,  and 

Research and 
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says. “We achieved a wide angle, short throw 
projection system with very good contrast and 
viewing  angles.  We  also  designed  a  tactile 
system that works on a curved surface without 
degrading the optical characteristics of the 
display.”

The mock-up was unveiled at the 2011 Paris 
Air Show, where it received plaudits from both 
pilots and potential customers. Two patents 
have already been granted, two more have been 
filed, while others are being planned. ODICIS has 
also just been awarded the 2011 ‘Janus de la 
Prospective’ prize, a top French design award. 
Bécouarn hopes the concept itself will enter 
the market in 2020-25. By then, pilots could 
finally replace their incomprehensible array of 
instruments with a flight deck that meets the 
interactive, intuitive demands of the age. 

Loïc  Bécouarn,  ODICIS  Project  Coordinator 
and Innovation Engineer at Thales Avionics, 
says pilots today are overburdened with huge 
volumes of data, hampering their ability to 
concentrate on actually flying the aircraft. “With 
the constant increase in air traffic, the pilot has 
to monitor increasing amounts of information. 
So we made the cockpit more user-friendly to 
simplify the pilot’s job and thus improve the 
safety of the flights,” he says.

The ODICIS cockpit can be individually tailored 
to pilot needs at different points in their mission. 
Instruments, controls and keyboards as well as 
maps, performance charts and synthetic vision 
displays can be easily reconfigured, changed in 
size, hidden or brought up again in an intuitive 
manner akin to touchscreen-based tablets like 
the Apple iPad. The idea is to turn the entire 
instrument panel into a seamless, interactive 
surface.

Building a large, seamless and curved avionics 
display was demanding in both technical (optics 
and graphics) and operational (pilot-machine 
interface) terms. “The design of the projection 
system was a challenge in itself,” Dominici 

ODICIS

Project Total cost: €5.6 million

Project EU contribution: €3.6 million

Partners from: Germany, Italy, France, 
Belgium, Denmark, Malta, Greece

www.odicis.org