Investigating the Role of Simulator Motion Cues during Simulation of In-Flight PIOs

Abstract

When simulating in-flight PIOs the researcher is faced with the question whether the inclusion of the motion capabilities of ground simulators have an added value to the results. If so, what kind of motion will best provide the adequate cues to the pilot in the simulator? This paper describes an experiment on moving-base hexapod SIMONA Research Simulator (SRS) that reproduced parts of an actual flight campaign conducted by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). During the real flight campaign, measurement of the aircraft state and pilot subjective ratings were gathered. Based on this set of data, an experiment on the SRS was set up to investigate the role of different simulator configurations on pilot behavior and performance and compare the pilot ratings with those from the flight campaign. The experiment was conducted with the two pilots that flew the original flight campaign. Three motion conditions were defined: roll, sway and no motion. For each condition the outside visual scene was either turned on or off. Subjective pilot ratings were measured. There are differing results per pilot. Subjective ratings of pilot 1 show large variation and no real differences between the simulator configurations, while those of pilot 2 show a general trend. For pilot 2 the roll motion came closest to matching the in-flight ratings and no-motion case was consistently rated better in the simulator than in flight. Sway motion condition resulted in ratings somewhere in between. For both pilots, no significant effect of the availability or absense of the outside visual scene on pilot ratings was found.