Research flight simulation of future autonomous aircraft operations

Abstract

A key element in the development and innovation of future aviation concepts and systems is research flight simulation. Research flight simulation is applied when the performance and perception of human pilots is a key measure of the overall assessment. This paper will give an overview of the research simulation set-up of the National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR), Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which is used for the human-in-the-loop evaluation of future operational concepts. Special attention is given to the research topic of Airborne Separation Assurance; often referred to as Free Flight. The presented set-up has proven to be a flexible evaluation tool for assessing human-in-the-loop performance when operating in a simulated future autonomous aircraft environment.

A Multimodal Approach to Design of Aircraft Cockpit Displays

“…Over the last few decades, the continuous global growth of air traffi c has led to increasing problems with respect to airspace capacity and delays [17]. This situation has initiated the research for new operational concepts and aircraft systems that aim for more independent aircraft systems in order to probe the human factors of pilots when operating in aircraft cockpit.…”

Implementation of an Intelligent HLA-Compliant Application Layer Gateway for Real-Time Flight Simulation

“…Lei et al [12] completed a flight simulator composed of PC clusters and non-flight-certified commercial-off-the-shelf components and proved its fidelity and coordination characters as a flight training device. Valenti Clari et al [18] gave an overview of the simulation set-up used for efficient and effective research in autonomous aircraft operations. Figure 2 shows how an HLA federation partitions its major functional components [5].…”