Simulator Evaluation of a Joint Human/Automated Upset Recovery System and Training Aid

Loss of control is a significant cause of aviation accidents attributed to a large percentage of fatalities in the commercial aviation sector. Recently, Barron Associates, Inc. (BAI) has developed a system for unmanned aerial vehicles that autonomously executes recovery strategies to rapidly restore nominal flight. During Phase I, BAI sought to extend this system to manned vehicles by developing a joint human-automated (H/A) system. The goal of this system is to assist the crew during the recovery process by conveying information about recovery procedures in an intuitive and unobtrusive manner. BAI developed crew-specific extensions to the automated system both at the architecture and interface level. The architecture defines what information is delivered to the crew. The interface defines how this information is presented to the crew. Metrics were defined to measure the quality of the recovery and crew experience. Phase I pilot-in-the-loop experiments have shown there is the potential for significant performance gains and workload reduction if the joint H/A recovery system is used to guide the pilot through the recovery process. Phase I experiments were limited in scope. During Phase II, BAI would like to build upon these results by demonstrating that gains become even more pronounced in a realistic cockpit environment. This will require migrating to a higher-quality simulator and more accurately simulating the duties of the crew. The team will target ATPs (Airline Transport Pilots) during Phase II and expand the subject population so that the benefit of the system can be explicitly quantified. While integration into the cockpit is the ultimate goal for this system, BAI believes that the joint H/A recovery system can be of immediate use as a training aid. As part of the experimental build-up, BAI would also like to show that the use of the joint H/A recovery system during training translates into improved pilot recoveries when the system is not active.