ADS 33 Handling Qualities Evaluation of Advanced Response Types Control Laws on the ACT/FHS Demonstrator

This paper presents preliminary flight test results obtained with advanced response type control laws flown on the ACT/FHS demonstrator. The ACT-IME project ("Active Control Technology for Improved Mission Effectiveness") is funded by the French MoD and seeks to deliver full flight envelope, level 1, operational control laws especially well suited for degraded visual environments. After a few years of conceptual improvements and simulation trials, the good results obtained on the simulator have been confirmed in a first series of flight tests performed at the end of 2004. The ACT/FHS demonstrator proved to be a very flexible and reliable machine, allowing for efficient flight tests on a specially prepared test course. Both the ACT/FHS integration process and the construction of a convenient, multi-maneuver test course are described in this paper. For flight test analysis, accurate GPS trajectories and workload evaluations with the DIMSS metric have shown very interesting results.