Implementation of a toolbox for the generation of flight profiles for use in simulator studies

Abstract

Motion sickness is a phenomenon which can produce various symptoms in affected individuals. During development of new aircraft types and cabin layouts, it is important to consider this phenomenon early on, to reduce resulting effects. For research on this topic, German Aerospace Center uses the simulator environment Air Vehicle Simulator together with the Advanced Future Cabin. The Air Vehicle Simulator is a full flight simulator with an interchangeable cockpit module. One of those modules is the Advanced Future Cabin, a realistic replica of an aircraft cabin. Good standardization of the test condi- tions is required to ensure objectivity and reliability of motion sickness studies in this simulator environment. A specialized software infrastructure is used to replay pre-recorded flight profiles, which are then reproduced by the simulator’s motion, visual and audio systems. Using this replay approach, complete flight profiles can be reproduced very well. However, when parts of the flight profile need exact reproduction within a flight profile or across multiple flight profiles, the approach to record pilot-in-the-loop simulation sessions becomes problematic, as flying the exact same twice is almost impossible. As an improved approach, a toolbox has been implemented, which automates the generation of flight profiles, enabling easier and more precise research on motion sickness in the simulator. The toolbox replaces the pilot-in-the-loop simulation with an automated control of the underlying aircraft simulation model. This leads to greatly improved accuracy of inputs to the simulation model and thus very good reproducibility even of flight profile segments. In this manuscript, details of the toolbox implementation and its validation are discussed.