ABSTRACT

Modern aircraft can be equipped with a flight envelope protection system: automation which modifies pilot control inputs to ensure that the aircraft remains within the allowable limits. Overruling the pilot inputs may lead to mode confusion, even when visual or auditory feedback is provided to alert pilots. We advocate using active control devices to make the flight envelope protection system tangible to the pilot. This paper presents the main findings of an evaluation of three haptic feedback designs for flight envelope protection. The first concept used both force feedback and vibro-tactile alerts, producing promising, yet inconclusive, results. The second concept used asymmetric vibrations to give directional alerting cues, which did not result in improved performance on initial use, but which did yield improved learning rate for the task. The third system employed force feedback to physically guide the pilot away from flight envelope limits, which yielded safety improvements from the first use, but created dependence: pilot performance degraded immediately after the force feedback was removed. From this, we advise to use asymmetric vibrations during training for flight envelope excursions, to leverage active control interfaces for providing force feedback during operation, and reevaluate a combination of both to combine their advantages for single-pilot operations.

摘要

现代飞机可以配备飞行包线保护系统：可以修改飞行员控制输入以确保飞机保持在允许范围内的自动化系统。即使提供视觉或听觉反馈来警告飞行员，否决飞行员输入也可能导致模式混乱。我们提倡使用主动控制装置，使飞行包线保护系统对飞行员来说是有形的。本文介绍了对三种用于飞行包线保护的触觉反馈设计进行评估的主要发现。第一个概念同时使用了力反馈和振动触觉提示，产生了有希望的但尚无定论的结果。第二个概念使用非对称振动来提供方向性警报提示，这不会在初次使用时提高性能，但确实提高了任务的学习速度。第三个系统采用力反馈来物理上引导飞行员脱离飞行包线极限，这在首次使用时就产生了安全性的改进，但是却产生了依赖性：在消除力反馈后，飞行员的性能立即下降。因此，我们建议在训练过程中使用非对称振动进行飞行包络线偏移，以利用主动控制界面在操作过程中提供力反馈，并重新评估两者的组合以结合其在单飞行员操作中的优势。