Helicopter Pilots Synchronize Their Altitude with Ship Heave to Minimize Energy When Landing on a Ship’s Deck

Thomas, Mathieu; Figueira, J.M. Pereira; Serres, Julien; Rakotomamonjy, Thomas; Ruffier, Franck; Morice, Antoine H.P.

doi:10.1080/24721840.2020.1862659

Cited by 2 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…during the pseudo-sinusoidal vertical movement of the ship across the three augmentation modalities ( Control , Replication , Addition , from left to right) of the Rough sea . The dotted radius depicts the average value of the phase at impact observed from expert pilots performing astern landings [ 20 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The way of selecting or automatically displaying the augmentation must also be considered to display augmented information with appropriate timing or in required environmental conditions. Indeed, it may be that different information, or only , has a different weight on the regulation of the maneuver depending on the landing phase as in [ 20 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, note that these results were only gained for an astern landing, with an immobile ship. Other procedures (see [ 20 ]), such as oblique, cross-deck and "fore-aft" procedures as well as a vessel navigating on the longitudinal axis should be tested to check the generality of our results. In the future, taking into account a complex model of the ship’s heave and not a pseudo sinusoidal model as used in this study to guide the landing with augmented reality would help pilots to better regulate their phase at impact by anticipating future quiescent period of the ship.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first postulates that, in both civil and military contexts, fuel should be economized and time to reach the ship's deck minimized during the approach phase. The second, highlighted by the work of Thomas et al [20], is to minimize the energy at impact during the landing phase. The author evidenced that expert pilots attempting to perform deck landing on a realistic fixed-base helicopter simulator, attempt to minimize energy at impact when landing on-sight by strongly coupling the altitude of their helicopter with vertical deck motions from the hover position.…”

Section: Designing Interfaces For Assisting Helicopter Ship Landingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ecological design of augmentation improves helicopter ship landing maneuvers: An approach in augmented virtuality

et al. 2021

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Helicopter landing on a ship is a visually regulated "rendezvous" task during which pilots must use fine control to land a powerful rotorcraft on the deck of a moving ship tossed by the sea while minimizing the energy at impact. Although augmented reality assistance can be hypothesized to improve pilots’ performance and the safety of landing maneuvers by guiding action toward optimal behavior in complex and stressful situations, the question of the optimal information to be displayed to feed the pilots’ natural information-movement coupling remains to be investigated. Novice participants were instructed to land a simplified helicopter on a ship in a virtual reality simulator while minimizing energy at impact and landing duration. The wave amplitude and related ship heave were manipulated. We compared the benefits of two types of visual augmentation whose design was based on either solving cockpit-induced visual occlusion problems or strengthening the online regulation of the deceleration by keeping the current τ˙ variable around an ideal value of -0.5 to conduct smooth and efficient landing. Our results showed that the second augmentation, ecologically grounded, offers benefits at several levels of analysis. It decreases the landing duration, improves the control of the helicopter displacement, and sharpens the sensitivity to changes in τ˙. This underlines the importance for designers of augmented reality systems to collaborate with psychologists to identify the relevant perceptual-motor strategy that must be encouraged before designing an augmentation that will enhance it.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Designing Interfaces For Assisting Helicopter Ship Landingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ecological design of augmentation improves helicopter ship landing maneuvers: An approach in augmented virtuality

et al. 2021

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“…Under realistic conditions, expert pilots combined the vertical displacements of their helicopter with the heave motion of the ship prior to deck-landing. This coupling would enable them to explore the future swell state of the ship so as to keep the energy at impact below a certain threshold value 42 . We therefore hypothesized that this exploratory coupling would make the affordance of deck-landing-ability more salient and thus facilitate its perception.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual augmentation of deck-landing-ability improves helicopter ship landing decisions

Thomas

Serres

Rakotomamonjy

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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When attempting to land on a ship deck tossed by the sea, helicopter pilots must make sure that the helicopter can develop sufficient lift to be able to safely touchdown. This reminder of affordance theory led us to model and study the affordance of deck-landing-ability, which defines whether it is possible to land safely on a ship deck depending on the helicopter's available lift and the ship’s deck heave movements. Two groups of participants with no piloting experience using a laptop helicopter simulator attempted to land either a low-lifter or a heavy-lifter helicopter on a virtual ship deck by either triggering a pre-programmed lift serving as the descent law if it was deemed possible to land, or aborting the deck-landing maneuver. The deck-landing-ability was manipulated by varying the helicopter's initial altitude and the ship's heave phase between trials. We designed a visual augmentation making visible the deck-landing-ability, and thus enabling participants to maximize the safety of their deck-landing attempts and reduce the number of unsafe deck-landing. The visual augmentation presented here was perceived by participants as a means of facilitating this decision-making process. The benefits were found to have originated from the clear-cut distinction it helped them to make between safe and unsafe deck-landing windows and the display of the optimal time for initiating the landing.

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Helicopter Pilots Synchronize Their Altitude with Ship Heave to Minimize Energy When Landing on a Ship’s Deck

Cited by 2 publications

References 7 publications

Ecological design of augmentation improves helicopter ship landing maneuvers: An approach in augmented virtuality

Ecological design of augmentation improves helicopter ship landing maneuvers: An approach in augmented virtuality

Visual augmentation of deck-landing-ability improves helicopter ship landing decisions

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