Adaptive Dynamic Response Characteristics of the Human Operator in Simple Manual Control

The human operator in a manual tracking task is kmown to change his control characteristics to adapt to particular controlled element dynamics, input characteristics and task requirements. This report describes an experimental investigation of human adaptive control following sudden changes in gain or polarity of the controlled element in a closed-loop tracking task. The experiments used primarily simple position control to determine lower bounds on the adaptation process. Random inputs were tracked under pursuit and compensatory single-axis displays.