Time-Varying Manual Control Identification in a Stall Recovery Task under Different Simulator Motion Conditions

This paper adds data to help develop simulator motion guidelines for stall recovery training by identifying time-varying manual control behavior in a stall recovery task under different simulator motion conditions. A study was conducted in the NASA Ames Vertical Motion Simulator, where seventeen general aviation pilots performed a stall recovery task. Pilots had to follow a flight director through four stages of the stall recovery task. A time-varying identification method was used to quantify how pilots weigh position and velocity information throughout different stages of the task, in both roll and pitch. Four motion configurations were used: no motion, generic hexapod motion, enhanced hexapod motion and full motion. Pilot performance was highest for the enhanced hexapod and full motion conditions in both roll and pitch, and the lowest for the condition with no motion. The time-varying identification method revealed that, in the roll axis, pilot position gain did not significantly change between time segments, but was the lowest for the condition with no motion. The pilot velocity gain was significantly different between motion conditions, the largest difference being found at the beginning of the stall. The enhanced hexapod motion condition had the highest pilot velocity gain. In the pitch axis, the pilot position gain was significantly different between time segments but not between motion conditions. The pitch pilot velocity gain was highest for the full motion condition and increased at the beginning of the stall, but did not change significantly for the other motion conditions. Overall, pilot control behavior under enhanced hexapod motion was more similar to that under full aircraft motion compared to standard hexapod motion. This indicates that motion cueing on hexapod simulators might be improved for stall recovery training by using the enhanced hexapod motion developed in previous experiments