Suppression of biodynamic disturbances and pilot-induced oscillations by adaptive filtering

Abstract

A method for reducing the effects of biodynamic interferences due to whole-body vibrations is described. Manual control tasks are particularly addressed. The method, based on adaptive filtering, enables a substantial attenuation of additive stick involuntary control commands due to pilot body vibrations (stick feedthrough). By means of computer simulations the feasibility of the proposed filtering method is demonstrated for two examples 1) adaptive filtering of biodynamic interferences due to stick feedthrough in manual vehicular control, 2) suppression of pilot-induced oscillations (PIO) due to stick feedthrough. This form of PIO is particularly anticipated for flexible aircraft having a high-gain, stiff stick. It is demonstrated that adaptive filtering is capable of suppressing the biodynamic interferences without substantially affecting the control characteristics of the aircraft/pilot system.