Identification of Roll Attitude Control Behavior During Turn Maneuvers

Abstract

For an aircraft roll attitude tracking task, the consequences of using target signals that consist of multiple ramp-like changes in target roll attitude for the identification of multimodal pilot models were considered. Such target signals are found to yield a control task that is similar to flying series of commanded turn maneuvers. Previous experiments, however, showed some negative implications for the identifiability of pilot control behavior. Here, the effects of ramp signal design are investigated by considering two values for ramp steepness, that is, 1 deg/s and 3 deg/s. Additional experimental conditions evaluated the use of a compensatory or a pursuit display, and of the presence of an additional multisine target signal, on pilot model identification. Ramp signal design and the different visual displays considered in the experiment did not show significant effects on the identifiability of multimodal pilot models. Superimposing a low-power multisine target signal on top of a ramp target signal is found to yield a markedly more consistent and stable pilot model identification problem than is obtained for pure ramp-following tasks. Both ramp signal design and visual display format were found to affect the adopted control strategy, as subjects clearly controlled with a lower gain during tracking of the 1 deg/s ramps and when a pursuit display was used.