Maneuver and Mission Aiding via Tactile Cueing Flight Demonstrations

Tactile cueing techniques previously developed for carefree maneuvering were expanded to assist the pilot with maneuver and mission tasks, bridging the gap between manual and autonomous flight. Multiple maneuver and mission aiding functions were prototyped and evaluated in simulation and flight test. The algorithms were developed in a platform agnostic manner, with a subset of the functions evaluated on three different demonstration aircraft: an H-6, AH-64 and an H-47. This paper describes the maneuver and mission aiding tactile cueing functions developed as well as the results from both piloted simulation and flight testing evaluations. Metrics were created and collected to quantify benefits in the categories of mission productivity, handing qualities, pilot workload, performance, and safety. The results showed significant benefit in each of these metrics area for each of the aircraft, suggesting that similar benefits can be expected if such maneuver and mission aid tactile cueing functions are applied to other platforms.