A Review of the Hosman and Van der Vaart Tracking Experiment D.M. Pool, * M. Mulder, † and M.M. van Paassen † Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5058, 2600 GB Delft, The Netherlands One of the first large research projects on human control behavior performed at Delft University of Technology is the work of Hosman and Van der Vaart. In their tracking experiment, Hosman and Van der Vaart investigated the influence of visual and vestibular motion cues on human control behavior in a situation similar to manual control of an aircraft. In these compensatory tracking tasks, subjects were asked to follow or counteract a signal presented on a central (foveal) display. The changes in performance and control behavior were investigated for the addition of peripheral visual and vestibular motion cues. Both disturbance and target following tasks were performed with exactly the same forcing function signal realization. This resulted in a target following and disturbance task which were both thought to be representative for manual control in actual flight, but yielded a significant difference in task difficulty between both types of task. Because of this discrep- ancy in task difficulty, it is unsure to what extent the differences between the two types of tracking task observed by Hosman and Van der Vaart actually result from their inherent differences, or are caused by the different levels of task difficulty. This paper describes the results of a recent experiment, highly similar to the tracking experiment of Hosman and Van der Vaart, that was performed in the SIMONA Research Simulator at Delft University of Technology. The goal of this experiment was to measure the effect of different visual and vestibular motion cues on control behavior in compen- satory target following and disturbance tasks of equal difficulty, thereby allowing for clear comparison of use of motion cues in both types of tasks. The results of this experiment indicate that the main trends in tracking performance and control behavior reported by Hosman and Van der Vaart for their target following and disturbance tasks can still be seen as representative for both types of classical compensatory tracking task. I. Introduction N owadays, simulators seem to be available for nearly every possible existing system, phenomenon or product. Especially in the aerospace field, simulators have proven to be highly useful and versatile tools for a whole range of purposes. However, in recent years a heated discussion has developed regarding the effectiveness of simulators for pilot training. In some instances, the inaccuracy of the vestibular and visual motion cues generated in simulator environments was found to actually have an adverse effect on pilot control in actual flight. 1 At the start of 2005 a large research project was started at Delft University of Technology (DUT) in which flight simulator fidelity would be investigated in detail. 2 The main goal of this research project is “to develop a method to objectively and quantifiably assess the extent to which a flight simulator supports real- flight pilot behavior and, when discrepancies occur, to trace them back to the way the multimodal stimuli are presented in the simulator.” DUT’s simulator fidelity research project adopts a cybernetic (control theoretic) approach to compare measured pilot control behavior during tracking tasks, both in a simulator environment and in actual flight. By varying the mechanisms for generating motion cues in the simulator environment and evaluating their influence on control behavior it is hoped that optimal rules for simulator motion cueing can be formulated. * Ph.D. student, Control and Simulation Division, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering. † Associate Professor, Control and Simulation Division, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering. 1 of 22 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technologies Conference and Exhibit 20 - 23 August 2007, Hilton Head, South Carolina AIAA 2007-6896 Copyright © 2007 by Delft University of Technology. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission.