Experimental Evaluation of the Human Performance on a RoboticFlight Simulator based on FOQA Parameters

The SIVOR project, currently being developed by ITA and Embraer, consists of designing and implementing a high fidelity flight simulator based on the use of COTS industrial robots. The aim of the project is to provide a cost-efficient and flexible platform that can be used along the design phases of the aircraft. One of the advantages of an industrial robot over the traditional Stewart platform is the availability of a large workspace, which provides more flexibility for defining the washout filter. This filter converts the aircraft dynamics into robot movements, which has a limited workspace. The main purpose of the flight simulator is to provide a motion feeling similar to the one imposed by the aircraft movements in a real flight. The representativeness of the motion cue is usually evaluated in a qualitative way by the pilots that fly the simulator. Quantitative methods to evaluate the entire range of actuation of a simulator are complex, inducing tests in fractions of the flight to increase performance. In this work, we discuss the use of FOQA (Flight Operational Quality Assurance) as an additional quantitative tool for the evaluation of the motion cue in the SIVOR flight simulator. FOQA is a voluntary safety program from FAA, detailed in AC-120-82. It proposes a set of parameters that can be used by airliners to analyse flight safety and increase operational efficiency. The verification of FOQA parameters checks whether or not the pilot complies with the standard operational procedures defined by the airliners and aircraft manufacturers. The purpose of this work is to analyse whether or not, and to what extent, the FOQA parameters can be used to evaluate the quality of the motion cue of flight simulators. For this purpose, we define an experimental procedure that compares flights performed by pilots under different motion modes. It then calculates a set of behavioural parameters that has been proposed in order to quantify how the motion affects the inputs of the pilot. The results are submitted to ANOVA statistical analysis that verifies the relevance of the motion factor. Finally, we discuss the capability of a FOQA based experiment to estimate the contribution of the motion to the realism of the flight simulation.