Using haptic feedbacks for obstacle avoidance in helicopter flight

An obstacle avoidance function based on haptic feedback has been developed and tested on a simulation environment at ONERA. The objective was to calculate and provide effcient haptic feedback through active (motorized) sidesticks for the piloting task of a rotary wing (RW) aircraft, in the vicinity of visible and known obstacles, corresponding to emergency avoidance procedure, or navigation in a congested area. Two different methods have been designed to generate the force bias based on virtual force fields (VFF) surrounding obstacles and on a geometric approach (GA) combined with T-theory, respectively. Piloted simulations were performed in order to evaluate the benefits for obstacle avoidance.