TACTILE CUEING EXPERIMENTS with a THREE AXIS SIDESTICK
Pieter G. Einthoven, Stephen J. Margetich, David G. Miller, Jeffrey S. Nicholas · 2001
This paper discusses the development of a simulation environment that includes a three axis active sidestick controller and the tactile cueing algorithms that were designed and evaluated using this simulator tool. Various types of tactile cues are evaluated and tuned for tactile cueing effectiveness. Fundamental techniques are demonstrated in the design of tactile cues for longitudinal cyclic control margin, tail-rotor gearbox torque limiting, hub moment limiting, bank angle limiting, and load factor cueing. This variety of helicopter limits includes proportional response critical, transient peak response critical, and integrated response critical limit impingement scenarios. Piloted simulation evaluation of these tactile cueing control laws is performed using high fidelity blade element rotor math models of the RAH-66 Comanche and AH-64D Apache helicopters. The RAH-66 explicit model following control laws, with aircraft dependent parameters optimized for either the Comanche or Apache airframes, are used as the baseline flight control system for assessment of the performance benefit of the tactile cues. The pilots’ ability to perform these tasks, pilot’s workload, and pilot comments are evaluated to determine the benefit of each type of tactile cue.