A Comprehensive Study of Three Delay Compensation Algorithms for Flight Simulators

This paper summarizes a comprehensive study of three predictors used for compensating the transport delay in a flight simulator; The McFarland, Adaptive and State Space Predictors. The paper presents proof that the stochastic approximation algorithm can achieve the best compensation among all four adaptive predictors, and intensively investigates the relationship between the state space predictor's compensation quality and its reference model. Piloted simulation tests show that the adaptive predictor and state space predictor can achieve better compensation of transport delay than the McFarland predictor. Nomenclature d t = time delay a t = mean asynchronous time delay y = uncompensated aircraft state p y = predicted aircraft state d y = delayed aircraft state u = pilot control Φ = state transition matrix Ψ = integral of the state transition matrix θ % = estimation output of the adaptive predictor algorithms j = velocity matrix k