Extending the Objective Motion Cueing Test to Measure Rotorcraft Simulator Motion Characteristics

In search of a more objective way to evaluate motion cueing fidelity, the Objective Motion Cueing Test (OMCT) was proposed by Advani and Hosman in 2006. However, a direct application of this test for rotorcraft flight simulation has not yet been studied. The first objective of this paper is therefore to investigate the extent to which the OMCT is representative for rotorcraft simulation. The second objective is to investigate whether the OMCT can be extended to better represent helicopter motion. It was found that the current OMCT defines a set of input signals that is sufficient for predicting simulator heave motion characteristics, but might not be representative for predicting simulator pitch and surge motion characteristics in rotorcraft flight simulation. Using an extended OMCT initially tailored to only longitudinal helicopter motion, notable differences in predicted simulator pitch and surge motion characteristics were found between configurations that the original OMCT considered equal. Comparing data from a pilot-in-the-loop experiment performed on the SIMONA Research Simulator (SRS) with off-line automated flights, it was found that the methodology can reliably expose trends in motion fidelity changes without having to rely on piloted simulator data. An initial attempt to validate the predicted fidelity changes with pilot ratings was not successful, but further experimentation with this methodology on the SRS is planned.