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CSULB students help build new cockpit design

A group of Cal State Long Beach students are trying to create a new cockpit design for planes — a collaboration of the American global aerospace and defense technology company Northrop Grumman and the College of Engineering.

CSULB’s College of Engineering Dean Forouzan Golshani said he is leading the research and under him, the engineering department uses three cockpit simulators in which a selected group of students learn how to install and use different applications.

He said that the research is not just for engineering students of a multidisciplinary background to contribute, but also to have diversity and different perspectives in the research.

“If there is a need [for a] statistician, biology or psychology students, we will invite them to participate,” Golshani said.

He said that these kinds of projects thrill him because what the students learn in this research can be applied to other domains.

“A fighter pilot sits for eight to 10 hours, so he has to have a pretty comfortable chair,” Galshani said. “The methods used to develop the chair for the fighter pilot can be used for people in wheelchairs.”

Oscar Beltran, a junior mechanical engineering major, said he was not aware of the research sponsorship for the engineering department, but gave positive remarks for it.

“I think it’s cool to be honest with you,” Beltran said. “Students will be learning about aeronautics and all that stuff. They are actually going to be using what they learn… and put it into a real life situation. I would be interested [in cockpit design]. That’s some good experience that can be used in the aerospace market…”

Golshani said that the project on research for cockpit design does not exist at the moment, but that he is still pondering about the idea.

While CSULB’s engineering department and Northrop Grumman have their eyes set on a new cockpit design, so does another company.

Last month, Gizmag.com, a technology oriented news outlet, reported that aerospace company Airbus patented a cockpit design that would use “3-D view screens.”

“The Airbus patent shows a windowless cockpit that removes the windows or reduces them to partial views of the outside world,” Gizmag.com reported. “Instead, exterior views are provided by a display formed by back projection, lasers, holograms or OLED imaging systems fed by cameras outside the fuselage.”

“These kind of projects make me happy,” he said. “What’s learned in this domain can be applied to other domains.”

Golshani said that the research has already begun and they are on “phase two” of the project.

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