Effect of Performing a Boundary-Avoidance Tracking Task on the Perception of Coherence Between Visual and Inertial Cues

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During flight simulation, the inertial and visual stimuli provided to the pilot differ considerably. For successful design of motion cueing algorithms it is necessary to gather knowledge on how pilots perceive the difference between visual and inertial cues. Some of the work done on this topic has concentrated on the concept of coherence zone. A coherence zone represents a range of inertial motion amplitudes, which although not being a match with the visual motion, are still perceived by humans as one realistic, coherent movement. To extend the knowledge on coherence zones an experiment was performed that tested the yaw motion coherence zone limits at two frequencies during passive and active situations. Subjects were required to perform a boundary-avoidance task as a mean to decrease the attention given to the perception task. This decrease in attention was thought to cause a widening of the perceived coherence zones. The boundary-avoidance tracking task had two levels of difficulty. The measured coherence zones did not change significantly with the addition of the control task. These results imply that unlike motion perception thresholds, coherence zones are little influenced by decreased levels of attention. This being true, for a range of tasks, such as supervisory tasks or procedural training in a flight simulator, pilot acceptance of the inertial cues might be measured in a passive manner and directly applied to the active scenario.