Pilot Stick Input Estimates from Attitude Commands as Indicator of Systemic Changes

摘要

Control-theoretic modeling of the human operator dynamic behavior in manual control tasks has a long and rich history. In the last two decades, there has been a renewed interest in modeling the human operator. There has also been significant work on techniques used to identify the pilot model of a given structure. The purpose of this research is to attempt to go beyond identification of a pilot model based on collected experimental data and to develop a predictor of pilot behavior. Two sets of experimental data were analyzed: 1) the effects of an adaptive controller on pilot compensation during control surface failures in cruise and 2) heads-up-display concepts during takeoff and landing. A general linear in-parameter model structure is used to represent a pilot Three different estimation methods are explored - a gradient descent estimator, a least squares estimator with exponential forgetting, and a least squares estimator with bounded gain forgetting. This paper discusses the accuracy of each of the three methods to estimate pilot longitudinal and lateral stick input from the flight director's commanded pitch and bank attitudes and the differences in piloting techniques during takeoff, cruise, and landing phases of flight.