Comparing Multimodal Pilot Pitch Control Behavior Between Simulated and Real Flight

摘要

To improve the tuning process of flight simulator motion cueing filters and support the development of objective simulator motion cueing requirements, a better understanding of how multimodal pilot control behavior is affected by simulator motion fidelity is required. To this end, an experiment is conducted in which seven pilots perform a pitch target-following disturbance-rejection task in a simulator under four different motion cueing settings. In addition, the task is performed in a real aircraft, which serves as the baseline condition. Differences between the simulator and aircraft experiment setup are minimized. Small remaining differences in the display and the sidestick setup slightly affected the experiment dependent measures. However, the effects introduced by the motion cueing settings are far more apparent. When motion fidelity improves to full aircraft motion, pilots are able to improve performance in attenuating the disturbance signal significantly. In addition, for improved motion fidelity, a change in multimodal pilot control behavior is observed by a decrease in pilot visual lead, while visual and vestibular perception delays increase. Pilot performance and control behavior in the simulator condition with full pitch motion and filtered pitch and center of gravity heave motion is most similar to the in-flight condition.