Motion Cues in Man-Vehicle Control Effects of Roll-Motion Cues on Human Operator's Behavior in Compensatory Systems with Disturbance Inputs

The human operator's use of roll-motion cues is investigated for man-vehicle control in a compensatory tracking task with a disturbance input. Extensive data for the human operator's describing function are taken for a wide range of vehicle dynamics under conditions of visual cues only, roll-motion cues only, and simultaneous visual and roll-motion cues. Addition of roll-motion cues to visual cues permits the human operator to increase his phase lead at frequencies above 3 rad/s. This allows him to increase the system open-loop gain without a loss of system stability, and thus to reduce the system tracking error. Experimental results indicate that in a compensatory system with a disturbance input, any condition in which additional human operator lead at frequencies above 3 rad/s would be useful is a condition in which roll-motion cues would aid.