Control inceptor design for remote control of a transition UAV

The human-machine-interface (HMI) is one centric element for operating or piloting an aircraft. It consists of different control inceptor implementations, based on the vehicle’s configuration, to efficiently interact with the flight control system. As VTOL transition aircrafts evolve on the market, new HMI designs have to be evaluated as this kind of configuration merges two common aircraft designs, the single-/multirotor and wing-borne vehicles, with their particular flight phases. The implementation of an HMI and its control inceptors is derived not only from the human operator/pilot's requirements but also from the design mission of the aircraft and its flight control strategy. To utilize full performance of a VTOL transition vehicle in terms of flight envelope, unified control strategies are applied to avoid any flight state-switching. This paper proposes a novel HMI design which implements control inceptors for efficiently operating or piloting a VTOL transition UAV with a unified baseline controller to utilize its complete flight envelope without flight stateswitching. Quantitative as well as subjective methods are used to validate the novel HMI against standard HMI designs, conventionally used for remotely piloting single-/multirotor and wing-borne vehicles. It will be shown that the proposed HMI design outperforms in accomplishing the selected mission task element and an outlook will be given to future applications of the novel HMI design in manned aviation.