A Motion Platform Integrated UAV Pilot Training and Evaluation System for Future Civilian Applications

The potential for UAVs to benefit the civilian consumer is driving the demand for the integration of these vehicles into the national airspace. With UAV accidents occurring at a significantly higher rate than commercial airlines, the urgent issue becomes designing systems and protocols that can prevent UAV accidents, better train UAV operators and augment pilot performance. This paper presents three directions of research stemming from the goal of a UAV piloting and training system. Research direction one is the development of a research platform to assess UAV pilot skills and recreate the sensation of shared fate for UAV pilots. The second research direction looks at utilizing flight simulation packages to create virtual tools for training UAV pilots. The third direction covers the investigation of UAV’s in near earth environments as future applications will place UAVs in these areas.