Experimental Evaluation of Classical Washout Filter Configurations for Fighter Jet Motion Cueing

Abstract

This research presents an exploratory investigation on the performance of classical washout filter configurations in replicating the motion dynamics of a fighter aircraft on the SIVOR platform, which is a flight simulator with a 7 dof robotic arm. Using the ADMIRE model to simulate flight dynamics, two washout configurations (baseline and tuned) were evaluated under smooth and aggressive commands for the same set of maneuvers. The simulator’s end-effector motion was compared to the aircraft’s original dynamics using a vestibular system model, incorporating human perception thresholds to quantify perceptual mismatch. Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and normalized cross-correlation were computed to assess cue fidelity across flight segments between the expected aircraft flight and the simulated flights. Additionally, CoppeliaSim is employed to simulate and visualize SIVOR’s behavior during each test case to evaluate collision occurrences in advance. Although the tuned MCA demonstrated marginal improvement over the baseline, both algorithms failed to consistently represent the fighter motion accurately. Results revealed that fixed-parameter filters underperformed not only across different maneuver types, but also for variations within the same maneuver due to small changes in control inputs. These initial findings are in agreement with literature, which highlights the limitations of classical washout filters and emphasize the need for adaptive or model-predictive cueing strategies, especially for high-gain flight scenarios.