Piloted simulator evaluations of an adaptive loss-of-control avoidance prediction architecture and augmented-reality pilot advisory display

Abstract

Loss-of-control in-flight has consistently been the primary contributor to air accidents worldwide. Towards mitigating aircraft loss-of-control, the General Aviation Flight Lab at Wichita State University has developed an early warning mechanism that predicts an aircraft’s “receding-horizon” safe control envelope and alerts pilots to future impending excursion of its safe flight envelope. The concept's intent is to help mitigate entry into loss-of-control by continually keeping an aircraft at a certain time-distance from the edge of its flight envelope. The architecture was previously validated through computational simulation, and an early iteration of the architecture was applied to the decoupled 2nd order short period and roll modes and evaluated in simulated flight testing, both having shown promising results. While sufficient for adverse flight configurations occurring exclusively in either the pitch or roll axes, loss-of-control often involves high angles-of-attack and large sideslip angles occurring simultaneously, leading to dynamic cross-coupling. Consequently, the architecture and pilot advisory display have been further refined and improved to support the higher-order aircraft model with cross-coupled dynamics between the longitudinal and lateral/directional modes. Pilot-in-the-loop testing of the updated prediction architecture is conducted to validate the effectiveness of the guidance technologies. The prediction architecture is implemented and evaluated in two forms: a head-down display and an augmented-reality head-up display using the Microsoft HoloLens. These are evaluated against the no-guidance condition. Results from testing indicate that the guidance technologies have the potential to help pilots maneuver the aircraft in a safer and more consistent manner within the safe flight envelope.