Relationship between optimal gain and coherence zone in flight simulation

Relationship between optimal gain and coherence zone in flight simulation

Correia Grácio, B.J.
Valente Pais, A.R.
van Paassen, M.M.
Mulder, M.
Kelly, L.C.
Houck, J.A.

2011

In motion simulation the inertial information generated by the motion platform is most of the times different from the visual information in the simulator displays. This occurs due to the physical limits of the motion platform. However, for small motions that are within the physical limits of the motion platform, one-to-one motion, i.e. visual information equal to inertial information, is possible. It has been shown in previous studies that one-to-one motion is often judged as too strong, causing researchers to lower the inertial amplitude. When trying to measure the optimal inertial gain for a visual amplitude, we found a zone of optimal gains instead of a single value. Such result seems related with the coherence zones that have been measured in flight simulation studies. However, the optimal gain results were never directly related with the coherence zones. In this study we investigated whether the optimal gain measurements are the same as the coherence zone measurements. We also try to infer if the results obtained from the two measurements can be used to differentiate between simulators with different configurations. An experiment was conducted at the NASA Langley Research Center which used both the Cockpit Motion Facility and the Visual Motion Simulator. The results show that the inertial gains obtained with the optimal gain are different than the ones obtained with the coherence zone measurements. The optimal gain is within the coherence zone. The point of mean optimal gain was lower and further away from the one-to-one line than the point of mean coherence. The zone width obtained for the coherence zone measurements was dependent on the visual amplitude and frequency. For the optimal gain, the zone width remained constant when the visual amplitude and frequency were varied. We found no effect of the simulator configuration in both the coherence zone and optimal gain measurements.

Human
PCS - Perceptual and Cognitive Systems
BSS - Behavioural and Societal Sciences
Space
Simulation
Information Society

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:17d9ea37-9fbe-47fe-af24-01b9c0ff0375

463817

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technologies Conference, 08 - 11 August 2011, Portland, Oregon, 510-523

AIAA 2011-6556

conference paper