Abstract
This paper reports the results of a Pilot-Induced Oscillation (PIO) and human pilot control characterization study performed using flight data collected with a Remotely Controlled (R/C) unmanned research aircraft. The study was carried out on the longitudinal axis of the aircraft. Several existing Category 1 and Category 2 PIO criteria developed for manned aircraft are first surveyed and their effectiveness for predicting the PIO susceptibility for the R/C unmanned aircraft is evaluated using several flight experiments. It was found that the Bandwidth/Pitch rate overshoot and open loop onset point (OLOP) criteria prediction results matched flight test observations. However, other criteria failed to provide accurate prediction results. To further characterize the human pilot control behavior during these experiments, a quasi-linear pilot model is used. The parameters of the pilot model estimated using data obtained from flight tests are then used to obtain information about the stability of the Pilot Vehicle System (PVS) for Category 1 PIOs occurred during straight and level flights. The batch estimation technique used to estimate the parameters of the quasi-linear pilot model failed to completely capture the compatibility nature of the human pilot. The estimation results however provided valuable insights into the frequency characteristics of the human pilot commands. Additionally, stability analysis of the Category 2 PIOs for elevator actuator rate limiting is carried out using simulations and the results are compared with actual flight results.
Highlights
There has been a surge in the use of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) in recent years due to their low-cost and versatility in applications such as product delivery, routine surveillance, resource management, disaster response, agriculture, etc
For simple flying conditions consisting of a single-input single-output task a human pilot can be satisfactorily represented as a quasi-linear system with a linear component consisting of corresponding gain, lead, lag, time delay and a non-linear remnant [12]
The research in this paper aims at laying the ground work for other researchers who plan to study Pilot-Induced Oscillation (PIO) and human control behavior on Remotely Controlled (R/C) aircraft
Summary
There has been a surge in the use of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) in recent years due to their low-cost and versatility in applications such as product delivery, routine surveillance, resource management, disaster response, agriculture, etc. PIO on UAS is that human life is not in danger due to PIO accidents; the lack of motion cues and pucker factor may render existing PIO criteria for manned aircraft ineffective on unmanned systems Filling this knowledge gap was one of the main motivations for carrying out this research. For simple flying conditions consisting of a single-input single-output task (e.g., maintaining a constant pitch attitude) a human pilot can be satisfactorily represented as a quasi-linear system with a linear component consisting of corresponding gain, lead, lag, time delay and a non-linear remnant [12] This quasi-linear model may not necessarily replicate the human pilot output or control decision making process exactly, but it is capable of giving basic information about the frequency properties and stability limits of the human controller for control tasks in systems such as aircraft or automobiles [5,13].
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