Perceptual Eigenmode Distortion Analysis for Motion Cueing Evaluation in Fixed-Wing Aircraft Simulators

Eigenmode Distortion: A New Perspective on Motion Cueing Fidelity in Flight Simulation

“…For example, the median MPFs suggest a constant relative distribution of the individual modes' overall contributions across the evaluated motion conditions and pilots. In addition, there is some evidence that measured MPFs are correlated with the motion cues present in the different simulator DOFs, a result also corroborated by other experiments performed to date [31,32,36]. As such, knowledge of the MPFs can potentially facilitate "targeted" EMD-based tuning of the MCA for specific maneuvers and tasks.…”

“…To date, the results from these various experiments suggest that pilots do not generally favor EMD-based motion settings subjectively over, e.g., OMCT-based motion settings. On the other hand, there is evidence that EMD-based motion tailored to portray specific dynamic modes results in an improved suppression of the respective (undesired) modes' contribution to the measured vehicle response (i.e., lower MPFs) [32]. The latter further reinforces the synergistic utility of MPFs to bridge the gap between the task and a quantitative motion cueing fidelity analysis based on EMD.…”

“…In other recent studies, namely [31,32], EMD was also used to tune the MCA to portray a fixed-wing aircraft's short period and Dutch roll modes for a pitch attitude capture and a yaw disturbance rejection task, respectively. Both studies also report pilot-in-the-loop experiments, where the EMD-based configurations were evaluated and compared to configurations obtained using other motion tuning strategies.…”

“…To partly alleviate this limitation, an extension to EMD where the extended eigenvectors of the coupled system are scaled using human perception thresholds, has been proposed [32]. EMD also requires that linear models of both the simulated vehicle and MCA dynamics are available, which may not be straightforward in some applications (e.g., training simulators, adaptive MCAs, etc.).…”

“…This also includes an example derivation of the method for the case of six DOF aircraft motion cued using the well-known Classical Washout Algorithm (CWA) [29]. These mathematical derivations form the basis of earlier work that relies on the EMD method, e.g., [30][31][32]. Second, the paper aims to demonstrate the applicability of the EMD method.…”