Pilot modelling for boundary hazard perception and reaction study

Abstract

Hazard perception is the recognition of conditions that may pose threats to the safety of flight. Recognizing hazards early is important since it gives you time to react or plan appropriate defensive action well before any actual danger materializes. This paper presents the development and subsequent analysis of a pilot model in order to understand, explain, and predict the pilot boundary-hazard perception and associated reactions. Hess’s multi-loop pursuit pilot model has been used to develop the part of the pilot model that performs the primary tracking task. The influence of the hazard perception and its reaction on the primary task can be modelled as a positive-feedback lead-lag term with two dependent parameters – a lead visual equalization term and a control gain to characterize the severity of the hazard situation. The piloted-simulation results on the 3DOF Bo105 longitudinal model have a good agreement with those of theoretically predicated ones using the proposed pilot model in terms of the pilot cut-off frequency and the tracking performance. The research indicates that a certain high level of the hazard can increase the tracking performance if the pilot chooses appropriate visual-lead and control efforts. Moreover, the results also show that the similar tracking performance can be achieved subject to different levels of hazards at the cost of slightly increased control efforts.