Development of Occupant-Preferred Landing Profiles for Personal Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

With recent increased interest in autonomous vehicles and the associated technology, the prospect of realizing a personal aerial vehicle (PAV) seems closer than ever. However, there is likely to be a continued requirement for any occupant of an air vehicle to be comfortable with both the automated portions of the flight and their ability to take manual control as and when required. This paper, using the approach to landing as an example maneuver, examines what a comfortable trajectory for PAV occupants might look like. Based upon simulated flight data, a ‘natural’ flight trajectory was designed and then compared to constant deceleration and constant optic flow descent profiles. It was found that PAV occupants with limited flight training and no artificial guidance followed the same longitudinal trajectory as had been found for professionally trained helicopter pilots. Further, the final stages of the approach to hover could be well described using Tau Theory. For automatic flight, PAV occupants preferred a constant deceleration profile. For approaches flown manually, the newly designed natural profile was preferred.