Review of pilot models used in aircraft flight dynamics

Mathematical representations of human control behaviour have played a very important part in manned aviation, especially in the definition of aircraft handling qualities requirements. New challenges posed by advances in aerospace technologies, such as fly-by-wire flight control, large flexible airframes and flight simulation, have led to increasingly complex mathematical representations of pilot behaviour. However, all these areas tend to be investigated separately and in parallel with human factors studies. The motivation behind this review is to promote discussion between the flight dynamicists and other engineers and scientists on the methods of modelling and simulation of today's pilot. A review of pilot model components used for flight control system design that focuses specifically on physiological and manual control aspects is presented in this paper. Models of varying complexity that are considered to be the state-of-the-art within the flight control and handling qualities engineering community are discussed. These include simple sensory models, biomechanics models and complex nonlinear pilot manual control models. In each area, the challenges posed by inter-subject variations and the need to understand the aircraft as a complex man–machine system are highlighted. However, the presented discussion is limited to a thin slice of this field thought to be fundamental to modelling manual control dynamics exhibited by aircraft pilots.