Evaluation of a Head-Mounted Display and advanced flight control laws for helicopter ship deck landing

Abstract

Within the maritime environment, helicopters can be used for a wide variety of missions including rescue missions, transport of personnel and material as well as for surveillance and reconnaissance. To perform such tasks on open sea and to expand the onshore refueling range, ship deck landings are necessary. Adverse weather conditions, such as high winds, fog and precipitation lead to strong ship movements and create a turbulent environment on the ship’s landing deck. Combined with few visual cues, ship deck operations put a high workload on pilots which can compromise flight safety. To support pilots during ship deck operations a symbology concept was integrated into the previously developed head-mounted display (HMD) based on a Microsoft HoloLens 2. Three advanced flight control modes were developed for the approach phase. Results from a simulator campaign with pilots in a realistic scenario indicate that the handling qualities can degrade with the HMD and only the relative translational rate command (RTRC) is suited as advanced control mode for ship deck operation.