Evaluation of Helicopter Ship Deck Landing Control Laws in Piloted Simulations

This paper describes the development and implementation of newly designed helicopter ship deck landing control modes and their evaluation in a piloted simulation study. The ship deck landing modes are embedded in a modelfollowing controller architecture. The employed control design is a complete model-following control system which imposes the desired command model dynamics on the controlled helicopter. Different command types combined with various hold functions are implemented to make the task easier for the pilots. Three basic command types and three advanced command types, one without ship communication and two with ship communication, are implemented. A piloted simulation study was performed in a simulator to evaluate and compare the implemented control modes within a complete maritime scenario design. The evaluation of control modes is based on the success of helicopter ship deck landings which is assessed by a quantitative as well as a qualitative assessment. Simulation results demonstrate that the advanced command types improved the task performance as well as reduced the pilot workload extensively in comparison to the basic command types.