Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2016
The practice of using mathematical models to simulate pilot behaviour in one–axis stabilisation tasks is a well–known conventional simulation problem. In this paper an accepted mathematical model of a pilot is used as the controller of a rudimentary helicopter model. Flight test manoeuvre data from inverse simulation runs is used to provide time–histories which represent input forcing functions to the pilot–helicopter system, and a constrained optimisation routine is utilised to obtain values for the pilot gain and lead/lag equalisation parameters. It will be shown that as the theoretical pilot is required to ‘fly’ different manoeuvres, or indeed if the level of manoeuvre aggression is varied, the ‘pilot’ adjusts these parameters to perform a tracking task in compensatory control. The paper considers initially the pilot and helicopter models and subsequently analyses the whole system, illustrating how the pilot model changes with different situations.