Active inceptor tactile cue design and evaluation using a flight simulator environment

In this paper, a simulator environment with an active control system is used for testing different force feedback schemes for flight envelope limit avoidance with pilots. Allowable control travels of elevator input of a fixed wing aircraft due to load factor limits and angle of attack limits are estimated online using a direct adaptive control margin estimation method utilizing concurrent learning with single hidden layer neural network. This information on control limits are later used with an active side stick to give force feedback cues to the pilots for limit avoidance. Hard stop, soft stop, hard stop with shaker and soft stop with shaker feedback cues are tested and compared on simulator test bench with pilots and scored via NASA-TLX questionnaires.