Airplane Installation at OPL
The Computerized Airborne Research Platform (CARP) at the OPL, Operator Performance Lab, at the University of Iowa is used for flight tests.
The Computerized Airborne Research Platform (CARP) was designed so that human factors could be studied along with advanced flight deck technology. The airplane is a Beech A-36 Bonanza, and it is equipped with sophisticated equipment that was designed at OPL. The equipment is loaded onto the plane by being placed on a rack. It contains a Dopplershift Novatel GPS with Omnistar correction for location data and also houses computers that can be set up to record video data for Eye Tracking. The equipment rack was designed so that the Flight Test Engineer can still sit in the airplane and monitor data acquisition. This makes it easier for data to be gathered for neural avionics and Eye Tracking studies. The CARP has also been equipped with a synthetic vision system.