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Supplementing Haptic Feedback Through the Visual Display of Flight Envelope Boundaries
Abstract
This paper describes the design and evaluation of a visual display in supplementing haptic feedback on the side stick as a way to communicate flight envelope boundaries to pilots. The design adds indications for the limits in airspeed, load factor, angle of attack and angle of bank to a standard Airbus primary flight display (PFD). The indications not only show the limits of the flight envelope, but also indicate magnitude and direction of the haptic cues. Fifteen professional Airbus pilots and one Airbus sim instructor participated in an experiment in the SIMONA Research Simulator at Delft University of Technology. Several approaches in three different scenarios were flown in alternate law with the old and new PFD, while haptic feedback was always enabled. Objective results do not show clear improvements with the new display, although the time spent outside the flight envelope is slightly reduced. Subjective results indicate a preference, however, for the new display and an increased understanding of the haptic feedback. Further research is recommended to focus on improving the design by removing unused indications and setting up an experiment with a bank scenario that allows the use of operational bank limits rather than artificially reduced limits.
... A Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test did not show statistical significant differences in experience between groups ( 2 = 3.17, > 0.2). Participants were instructed to always remain within the nominal limits of the flight envelope (black line on Fig. 1) which are shown on the PFD using the red indications proposed in Ref. [30]. Additionally, it was mentioned that a simulation run would stop when the aicraft reached an altitude of 50ft above ground level, irrespective of any other event/performance. ...
... The display right in front of the pilot was the PFD showing the critical flight states, shown in Fig. 6b, which included display indications used to show why and when the haptic feedback is active. [30] Next to the visual information, auditory warnings were presented when the aircraft angle of attack was above the maximum value, and when the velocity was above the maximum velocity. ...
... For both the haptic and visual interface, all groups are undecided on whether much training is required (Fig. 29d and 29e). The majority of the pilots who received haptic feedback did agree that the visual and haptic feedback did not give conflicting signals, attesting to the design work reported in Ref. [30]. Nevertheless, a difference in groups might be present on whether the pilots were fighting the haptic system: Fig. 29f shows that for the majority of the cueing group this was not an issue, whereas the majority of the guidance group reported to be 'fighting' the haptic system. ...
Modern aircraft use a variety of fly-by-wire control devices and combine these with a flight envelope protection system to limit pilot control inputs when approaching the aircraft limits. The current research project aims to increase pilot awareness of such a protection system through the use of force feedback on the control device, i.e., haptics. A previous design used asymmetric vibrations to cue the pilot on the flight envelope. The evaluation showed no improvement in metrics at the first emergency encounter, yet did show a potential training benefit. Therefore, a new haptic feedback concept was designed with the specific aim to guide the pilot when approaching a limit and provide support from the first time use. This paper evaluates these haptic feedback designs with 36 active PPL/LAPL pilots who flew a challenging vertical profile and encountered a windshear in a fixed-base simulator. The pilots were divided in three groups who received either cueing, guidance, or no haptic feedback. It was hypothesized that: (i) cueing haptic feedback provides a faster learning rate compared to no-haptics, and (ii) guidance haptic feedback results in best performance from the first run yet worse metrics when no feedback is provided. Comparing the results of the cueing and no-haptic feedback groups confirmed the first hypothesis. Results also showed that the guidance haptic feedback resulted in improved metrics at the first run, and the worsening of metrics when no longer provided.
... As these pilots are not necessarily active Airbus pilots, they are reminded that the aircraft model used has a mass of 64, 000kg and has to be handled with more care than a general aviation aircraft. Additionally, they are instructed to always stay within the nominal limits of the FE (black line on Fig. 1) which are shown on the PFD using the red indications proposed in Ref. [22]. Additionally it was mentioned that each run would stop at 50 f t above ground level irrespective of any other event/performance due to limitations of the simulation. ...
... The display right in front of the pilot is the PFD showing the critical flight states, shown in Fig. 6b, which includes display indications used to show why and when the haptic feedback is active. [22] Next to the visual information, auditory warnings are presented when the angle of attack is above the maximum value, and when the velocity is above the maximum velocity. ...
... Therefore these experiments indicated that it was beneficial to reduce the degrees of freedom allowed to the pilot participants. [11,22] Therefore, in the present experiment the required flight trajectory is more stringent, as will be discussed below, followed by the emergency scenario encountered. ...
... The lack of participants' training increases results variance in the comparative experiments. One example is a recent study by de Rooij et al. [1], which presented a visual display to supplement haptic feedback on the side stick to maintain safe flight conditions. The experiment involved 15 professional pilots. ...
Haptic feedback is a method to provide tactile guidance in scenarios requiring multiple senses and divided attention like aviation. Earlier tests on a flight simulator and an in-flight test using the proposed tactile guidance method have shown the need to study its learning process. In this study, twelve participants completed two tactile guidance tasks without visual feedback across twelve sessions to analyze the learning effect. The paper shows an improvement between sessions in guidance accuracy, response time, and self-assessed workload. On the other hand, reaction delay is not affected by the training. The percentage improvement between the initial and trained skills reached 30 % in guidance accuracy performance.
This paper discusses the design and evaluation of an efficient safe flight envelope protection method for keeping an augmented aircraft with manual flight control laws within the safe envelope bounds. This flight envelope is estimated adaptively, so that configuration changes andpossible failures can be takeninto account.The updated information of the safe envelope is used in the flight control laws to prevent loss of control in flight. It has been found that a control architecture involving separate pilot command filtering is particularly well suited to incorporate these adaptive protections.Moreover, haptic feedback to the pilot controls can be included aswell, based on the same adaptive bounds. This has the potential to further increase the flight crew awareness about the risk of losing control in flight. These algorithms have been evaluated in the Simulation, Motion, and Navigation Research Simulator at Delft University of Technology to investigate the impact on the awareness of the crew. Commercial airline crews flewmultiple challenging approachand landing scenarios ina relevant simulated environment.Results showthat the algorithms support the flight crew significantly. They contribute to "carefree" flying and to avoiding loss of control in flight. © 2017 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.
In recent studies, it has been observed that loss of control in flight is the most frequent primary cause of accidents. One of the technologies that will significantly reduce the risk of loss of control accidents is onboard safe flight envelope estimation. An efficient method for estimating the safe flight envelope for impaired aircraft has been implemented and evaluated in piloted simulations. This modular method is based on a physical approach. The aerodynamic system parameters are estimated from realistic noisy sensor measurements based on a probabilistic approach. These parameters are then used for efficient model-based computations of the trim envelope as a set of equilibrium points that can be attained by means of admissible inputs. The safe maneuverability limitations are extended beyond the trim envelope through a robust reachability analysis derived from an optimal control formulation. These trim and maneuvering envelope limits can be used for multiple purposes. For example, they can be conveyed to the flight crew in an intuitive way by incorporating this information in the primary flight display. These display features have been evaluated in the Advanced Concepts Flight Simulator at Ames Research Center as part of a larger research initiative. Commercial airline crews flew multiple challenging approach and landing scenarios in a relevant environment. Results show that the additional display features contribute significantly to flight crew awareness and avoiding loss of control in flight.
This paper describes the design and evaluation of a shared control, haptic feedback system to communicate Flight Envelope Protection System intent. The concept uses a combination of stiffness feedback and vibration to communicate proximity of the aircraft state to flight envelope boundaries. In addition, a stick center shift can be applied by the envelope protection system to cooperatively perform corrective actions in case of severe excursions of the envelope margins. Results from the evaluation experiment show improved performance with haptic feedback in both scenarios. Workload ratings were unaffected. Pilot opinion was unanimously positive, especially with regard to the combination of stiffness feedback and vibration cues.
This paper presents an interface system display which is conceived to improve pilot situation awareness with respect to a flight envelope protection system developed for a mid-sized transport aircraft. The new display is designed to complement existing cockpit displays, and to augment them with information that relates to both aircraft state and the control automation itself. In particular, the proposed display provides cues about the state of automation directly in terms of pilot control actions, in addition to flight parameters. The paper also describes a forthcoming evaluation test plan that is intended to validate the developed interface by assessing the relevance of the displayed information, as well as the adequacy of the display layout.
There is abundant evidence showing that technological innovations have led to major reductions in the accident loss per unit distance of mobility, in certain road sections, on certain roads as well as in the road network as a whole. However, the accident loss per time unit of road-user exposure and per head of population have not shown equally favourable downward trends. In order to explain this contrast, as well as many other findings regarding road-user behaviour, the theory of risk homeostasis (RHT) has been put forward. This posits that accident loss per capita and road-user behaviour are mutually related in a closed-loop regulation process, with the level of preferred risk as the controlling variable outsidethe closed loop. There is evidence also that the per capita traffic accidents can be reduced by motivational interventionsthat are effective in lowering road users' preferred level of accident risk. RHT has received support as well as opposition from other researchers. The purpose of the present paper is to identify what appear to be the major sources of disagreement. It will be argued that the opposition to RHT is largely due to misapprehension of its essential propositions and their derivations and that the allegedly contradictory empirical data drawn into the debate by some commentators are either inconclusive, compatible with, or in support of the theory in question.
The University of Dayton is supporting the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) research on the structural integrity requirements for the U.S. commercial transport airplane fleet. The primary objective of this research is to develop new and improved methods and criteria for processing and presenting large commercial transport airplane flight and ground loads usage data. The scope of activities performed involves: (1) defining the service-related factors that affect the operational life of commercial aircraft; (2) designing an efficient software system to reduce, store, and process large quantities of optical quick-access recorder data; and (3) reducing, analyzing, and providing processed data in statistical formats that will enable the FAA to reassess existing certification criteria. Equally important, these new data will also enable the FAA, the aircraft manufacturers, and the airlines to better understand and control those factors that influence the structural integrity of commercial transport aircraft. Presented herein are Airbus A-320 aircraft operational usage data collected from 10,066 flights, representing 30,817 flight hours as recorded by a single U.S. airline operator. Statistical data are presented on the aircraft's usage, flight and ground loads data, and systems operational data. The data presented in this report will provide the user with information about the accelerations, speeds, altitudes, flight duration and distance, gross weights, speed brake/spoiler cycles, thrust reverser usage, and gust velocities encountered by the Airbus A-320 during actual operational usage.
There is no standard way of measuring driver acceptance of new technology. A review of the literature shows that there are almost as many methods of assessment of acceptance as there are acceptance studies. The tool for studying acceptance of new technological equipment that is presented here has a major advantage compared with many other studies in that esoteric knowledge of scaling techniques is not required. The technique is simple and consists of nine 5-point rating-scale items. These items load on two scales, a scale denoting the usefulness of the system, and a scale designating satisfaction. The technique has been applied in six different studies in different test environments and analyses performed over these studies show that it is a reliable instrument for the assessment of acceptance of new technology. The technique was sensitive to differences in opinion to specific aspects of in-vehicle systems, as well as to differences in opinion between driver groups. In a concluding section explicit recommendations for use of the scale are given.
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