Pilot Control Actions Optimal Model Modification and Its Application to the Piloting Performance Estimation Criteria Development

Аuthors

Efremov A. V.^*, Efremov E. V., Grishina A. Y.^**

Moscow Aviation Institute (National Research University), 4, Volokolamskoe shosse, Moscow, А-80, GSP-3, 125993, Russia

*e-mail: pvl@mai.ru
**e-mail: GrishinaAY@mai.ru

Abstract

The most important requirements placed on the aircraft engineering at all historical stages of its development were achieving the highest efficiency of application while ensuring a required level of flight safety. These requirements are being reached in various ways, including both flight performance and handling characteristics improving. To design control systems, complex studying of the aircraft–pilot system is necessary. In this regard a need for studying the pilot behavioral regularities and developing mathematical model of his control actions occurs.
The presented article pays attention to the optimal approach to the pilot control actions development based on the optimal systems theory (the LQR method). This approach application allows obtaining rather close results of mathematical modeling and experimental studies in the field of medium and high frequencies with the little time consumption necessary for the aircraft–pilot system characteristics computing. However, the conducted studies revealed that such approach has a number of disadvantages. Firstly, the pilot's frequency response demonstrates significant phase advance in the low-frequency area, which was not observed in the experimental studies. Besides, practically all known publications on the pilot’s control actions optimal model consider stabilization task. Within the framework of this approach, accounting for the extra feedbacks, being introduced by the pilot (proprioceptive and acceleration information) is studied at present quite poorly. The disadvantage of the pilot's control actions mathematical model is as well the dependence of the results being obtained on the model input parameters, particularly, weight coefficients of the functional being minimized. This work deals with eliminating the above said disadvantages of the optimal model and expanding its capabilities. 
The developed modified optimal model of the pilot's control actions characteristics allowed:
• Confirming experimentally the expediency of the exact model of the controlled element dynamics replacing with an approximate analog in the low-frequency region while the controller synthesis by the LQR method. This replacement ensured compliance of the mathematical and seminatural modeling results.
• Accounting for the internal proprioceptive feedback, which allowed accuracy increasing of the aircraft-pilot system mathematical modeling, expanding the class of applied tasks to be solved and eliminating the controlled element dynamics effect on the quality functional weighting coefficients selection.
• Accounting for the additional channel of the acceleration information perception, which expanded the possibilities of the optimal control model application.
Application of the optimal model modification obtained while this study allowed enhancing the piloting performance prediction with the “New MAI Criterion”. Besides, the authors obtained the piloting performance criterion normalizing the aircraft-pilot system parameters in the lateral canal accounting for the acceleration information effect. Expressions for computing each factor (vestibular and visual) as well as integral subjective rating of the pilot were obtained.
The computed ratings have predicted the level of all 23 selected configurations from the LATHOS lateral channel dynamic configuration database, and matched the ratings obtained in the flight experiments. The prediction confidence coefficient of the subjective rating of the pilot prediction R2 is 0.9307.

Keywords:

pilot-vehicle system, modification of the pilot control actions characteristics optimal model, piloting performance estimation criteria, multimodal control tasks, steering levers, acceleration information

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