Abstract:
The research presented in this paper is part of a project underway at the University of Liverpool (UoL) which aims to develop overall simulation fidelity requirements for maritime rotorcraft flight simulators. This requires a structured examination of individual Modelling and Simulation (M&S) elements, such as motion and visual cues, flight dynamics model and ship airwake integration. The paper reports the initial results of motion cueing research that has been conducted to assess and optimise the motion drive laws and determine high fidelity motion cueing for simulated shipboard operations. To do this, an objective technique, Vestibular Motion Perception Error (VMPE), has been developed. The technique was utilised to optimise the motion cues in UoL's Heliflight-R simulator for a simulated helicopter landing on an aircraft carrier in a turbulent environment. Four motion tuning sets were derived offline and experimentally tested. Results show the influence of different motion cues and airwake conditions on the pilot's overall self-motion perception, control strategy and task performance. It was found that high-fidelity motion cueing becomes more desirable for the pilot at higher airwake wind conditions, for which an 'Optimised' motion setting was obtained using the new technique, than at lower airwake turbulence conditions.