Adaptive filtering of biodynamic stick feedthrough in manipulation tasks on board moving platforms

A novel approach to suppress the effects of biodynamic interference is presented. An adaptive noise canceling technique is employed for substracting the platform motion correlated components from the control stick output. The effects of biodynamic interference and its suppression by adaptive noise cancellation has been evaluated in a series of tracking tasks performed in a moving base simulator. Simulator motions were in pitch, roll and combined pitch and roll. Human operator performance was assessed from the mean square values of the tracking error and the control activity. The tracking error and the total stick output signal were found to increase significantly with motion and to diminish substantially with adaptive noise cancellation, thus providing a considerable improvement in tracking performance under conditions in which platform motion were present. The adaptive filter was found to cause a significant increase in the cross-over frequency and decrease in the phase margin. Moreover, the adaptive filter was found to significantly improve the human operator visual motor response. This improvement is manifested as an increased human operator gain, a smaller time delay and lower pilot workload.