Estimating Handling Qualities Ratings from Slalom Flight Data: A Psychophysical Perspective

This work examines the handling qualities (HQ) rating scale from a psychophysical perspective, characterizing workload as the response to a stimulus composed of input to the pilot and pilot outputs. Previous work by the author examining three different display tracking tasks indicated that pilot workload is effectively a logarithmic function of tracking error rate and control rate. This approach, called the Spare Capacity OPerations Estimator (SCOPE), is extended to flight and Handling Qualities data collected (109 runs) for the slalom Mission Task Element (MTE) using the U.S. Army’s JUH-60A RASCAL aircraft. Attitude and Rate Command response types as well as various forcefeel configurations were tested. Based on flight data observation a novel and intuitive action model is proposed for the slalom MTE whereby the pilot operates on the relative angle between the ground track and the upcoming cone’s location (effectively the cone’s location on the windscreen relative to the aircraft nose, assuming a no-wind environment). Proximity to an approaching cone determines which of two strategies is active: maintaining a constant relative angle or maintaining the relative angular rate constant. A method is proposed for mapping Handling Qualities (HQ) ratings to flight data performance and the workload estimate, offering the possibility for easing the requirement that a pilot trained in HQ evaluation fly test maneuvers. Applying this approach to the slalom maneuver produced good correlation between actual and estimated HQ ratings over the varying aircraft and inceptor feel system dynamics.