Verification of a Motion Cueing Strategy for Stall Recovery Training in a Commercial Transport Simulator

Abstract

This paper verifies a motion cueing strategy for improved pilot stall recovery training in commercial transport simulators. Eight airline transport pilots flew a high-altitude stall recovery task in the NASA B747 level-D-certified full flight simulator under three different motion configurations: no motion, baseline motion, and enhanced motion. For each motion condition, pilots performed the task with both baseline aircraft dynamics and aircraft dynamics enhanced with lateral-directional characteristics of the airplane at angle of attack approaching stall. Motion configuration significantly affected: 1) pilot opinions on the helpfulness of motion in performing the task, 2) the maximum roll angle in the stall maneuver, 3) the minimum load factor in the recovery, 4) the number of secondary stick shakers in the stall recovery, and 5) the maximum airspeed in the recovery. The two different aircraft dynamics significantly affected: 1) pilot opinions on the noticeability of the banking roll off near the stall and 2) the maximum roll angle in the stall maneuver. These results indicate that the relatively minor enhancements to the motion logic of heritage commercial transport simulators presented here can significantly improve pilot performance in simulated stall recoveries, and potentially improve stall recovery training.

Adaptive Hexapod Simulator Motion based on Aircraft Stability

“…An optimized hexapod motion cueing strategy for stall recovery training was evaluated in previous studies in the VMS and B747 simulators at NASA Ames Research Center [4,[7][8][9]. This optimized motion cueing strategy prioritizes translational accelerations as a result of rotations with respect to the c.g.…”

“…In an approach to stall, the roll damping coefficient of the airplane decreases, resulting in unstable roll behavior [9,14]. This parameter is therefore a good indicator for the aircraft's transition from stable to unstable flight, a regime where different motion cues become more important for human manual control [4].…”

“…The motion parameters for this condition were determined using the mean motion response of a statistical sample of eight representative hexapod motion simulators [19,20]. The optimized hexapod condition prioritized translational accelerations as a result of rotations with respect to the center of gravity over translational accelerations of the center of gravity allowing for significantly higher gains and lower break frequencies compared to the baseline hexapod motion condition [4,9].…”

“…Several previous studies investigated pilot control behavior and performance in a stall recovery task under the baseline hexapod (HB), optimized hexapod (HO), and full motion (FM) conditions [4,7,9]. Hypotheses were formulated based on the findings of these studies and the notion that the adaptive hexapod motion condition (HA) provides motion similar to HB in the heading task and similar to HO in the stall task.…”

“…Under this SE209 research, four simulator studies with pilots were conducted in the Vertical Motion Simulator (VMS) at NASA Ames Research Center, to develop a hexapod motion cueing strategy for stall recovery training in commercial transport simulators [4,[6][7][8]]. An additional study in a level-D-certified B747 full flight simulator verified the motion cueing strategy with commercial airline pilots [9]. This motion cueing strategy prioritizes translational accelerations as a result from rotating around the aircraft's center of gravity over translational accelerations of the center of gravity, allowing for a higher fidelity of the motion cues that directly help a pilot damp the flight path response in a stall recovery, as well as stabilize the progressively less-stable roll dynamics and roll off near stall.…”