Research seminatural simulator for piloting tasks and flight data processing analysis

The report presents the structure, composition and algorithmic support of hardware and software for modeling the spatial movement of the aircraft. The proposed stand is conceptually different from the currently spread in flight simulators stands, which are usually intended for testing of aircraft equipment or for training flight crews (simulators). The proposed stand is designed for research and analysis piloting tasks and flight data processing algorithms. The main feature of the stand is the relative simplicity of the interface in conjunction with the full simulation of the dynamics of the aircraft. This approach allows restricting relatively simple software that is developed by the researchers. At the same time the most important advantage is that the use of the program is fully controlled by the researchers and can quickly change depending on the task. In this embodiment, the stand implement the complete equations of aircraft spatial motion, the model of the aerodynamic coefficients and algorithms for the remote control system chosen to the aircraft model, standard atmosphere and wind model.

The complex has a simplified graphical interface that displays the main elements of the information field of the cab and stylized controls. As the hardware implementation of controls can be a wide range of devices, but the authors use the control stick and the throttle control lever Thrustmaster Hotas Warthog. These devices are in the course of the experiments showed the best value characteristics such as maximum obtaining data delay, the average obtaining data delay, the resolution, the maximum fluctuation in the absence of external influence, the maximum signal / noise ratio of the device.

Stand is a program written on C + + (compiler GNU GCC Compiler). Visualization of the cabin is implemented using software libraries Xors3d Engine and 3D-models in the format of B3D. Modular software architecture allows creating the expansion for the application package MATLAB. No significant requirement for hardware and software allows installing the complex on any modern PC.

The software is compatible with the PC operating system Windows. Despite the fact that the OS cannot work in real time, practice shows that the introduction of additional mechanisms to stabilize the integration step is necessary only on a PC with low productivity.

The effectiveness of the stand has been tested with the following tasks:

• estimation algorithm validation flight data recording;
  
• errors algorithms evaluation for the on-board altitude and speed parameters measurement;
  
• the human operator aircraft control research during landing.
  

This work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), project 12-08-00682.