Expediency of using moving-base flight simulators in research on pilot aids evaluation

Abstract

Ground-based simulation has become an integral stage in the design of aviation technology. When solving most problems, flight simulators are increasingly used to simulate the piloting process with the participation of human operators on the ground. For example, flight simulators are used to test out the laws of control systems, study the information display systems, and creating prototypes. When forming a ground-based simulation system, an attempt is made to recreate visual, kinesthetic, and motion information for the pilot (operator). It should be noted, however, that not all tasks require simulating all of the above types of information perceived by the pilot, which significantly reduces the cost of creating a flight simulator. This present work is devoted to substantiating the need to use one of the most expensive systems—a motion cue simulation system—in the tasks of evaluating the effectiveness of next-generation flight information display equipment under various types of atmospheric disturbances. During the experiments, the most dangerous types of disturbances for aircraft in the takeoff and landing modes were simulated, such as a wake vortex from a previously passing aircraft and wind shear caused by a microburst. It is shown that not all types of atmospheric disturbances require simulating motion information.