Brochures

Annual Reports

SimLabs Technical Papers

Real-Time Simulation Documentation

William W.Y. Chung
Chuck Perry
Norm Bengford
Logicon Operations & Services

Low cost motion devices have been sought to provide motion cues in ground-based flight simulators to meet mission objectives. The ability to provide high frequency vibrations makes the dynamic seat attractive to helicopter training applications. Previous studies have found that dynamic seats enhance the realism of the cockpit and affect pilot workload. This investigation used a three degree-offreedom dynamic seat, i.e., heave, surge, and sway, with limited travels in a research simulator configured as a UH-60 Black Hawk. The seat's effectiveness was studied using acceleration/deceleration, bob-up/bob-down, hover, pirouette, sidestep, and vertical landing maneuvers. Results from four different motion cueing levels, i.e., the dynamic seat, hexapod-like system, hexapod-like plus seat shaker, and large travel plus high frequency vibrations, found the dynamic seat has positive subjective effects in some of the maneuvers. However, no significant objective performance effects were found due to the dynamic seat.

Download the full paper in PDF (1.0 Mb).

A hardcopy of this document is available by request from Kathleen Starmer.