Horizontally opposed pressure loaded computer generated artificial feel control column for a motion base flight simulation system using fused hard & soft computing

To induce true feel of flight in a flight simulation system, flight controls play a vital role. The varying loading of the flight column during flight, is based entirely on the aerodynamics characteristics of the aircraft set by the flight controls. Replication of such forces in a simulator poses multiple challenges, including generation of simulated aerodynamic forces, mapping of the forces on a mechanical assembly and development of a mechanical assembly for translation of such forces on the flight column. The addition of non-linearities in the system increases the degree of difficulty. The paper presents such a developed system, which uses a simulation software for generating flight data, a 3-mode feed forward PID control loop for maintaining the mechanical system close to the set-points generated by the simulation software, a fuzzy logic based inference engine for modifying control loop parameters according to changing system conditions and a horizontally opposed spring loaded mechanical system for mapping controller responses on the flight column. The usage of a fused hard & soft computing approach results in increased repeatability, reliability and robustness. The initial testing and experimental results have been very encouraging.