Pitch Motion Perception Thresholds During Passive and Active Tasks

Knowledge about motion perception thresholds is essential for simulator motion cueing. Thresholds are generally measured in a passive experimental setup in which subjects do not actively influence their motion. For flight simulation applications, it is useful to also investigate thresholds during control tasks, where pilots actively influence the motion they sense. In this paper, thresholds were estimated during an active control task using a pilot model parameter identification method. A comparison with conventional passive threshold measurements was made. The threshold identification method was based on a multichannel pilot model extended with a nonlinear absolute threshold element. Two experiments were performed in a flight simulator: a passive experiment to measure the sensory pitch threshold, and an active experiment with a compensatory control task to identify the active pitch threshold. In the active experiment, the gain of the inertial motion amplitude was varied and two types of compensatory control tasks were considered. For both tasks, the pitch threshold was identifiable only for high motion gain levels. The measured passive threshold was lower than other values found in literature. The threshold identified from the active control task was higher than the measured passive threshold, but it was comparable with passive threshold values reported in other studies.