Abstract

Every plane has three ways to control how it can fly and turn. They are the rudder (turn left or turn right), elevators (up and down), and ailerons (roll left or roll right). The team is working to create a set of foot pedals that can control a plane’s rudder in Lockheed Martin’s desktop flight simulators. The pilot can press on one of the pedals turning the plane left or right. The pedals currently in use do not react to events occurring in the simulator. This leaves the pilot experiencing a consistent amount of force. Pilots experience forces dependent on speeds, leaving the current training experience less than ideal. 

The team improved on this issue by developing pedals that offer a changing resistance as events change in the flight simulator. The resistance the pilot feels on their foot will change as events change in the simulator. An example of this is how a pilot must press harder on the pedals because of air resistance at high speeds compared with how hard they press when driving around on the runway.

Our final design includes pedals that will use a hydraulic disc brake positioned in between the pedals. When the pilot pushes the pedal, a center beam will rotate causing the disk to rotate as well. When a new event occurs in the simulator, our pedals will take in that data and force a clamp to press onto the center disk. The simulation will tell the clamp how much pressure to exert on that disk creating resistance for the foot pedals. How much the pedal is pressed is then sent to the simulation to control the plan accordingly. This change in resistance will lead to a more accurate simulation experience for any pilots using the pedals.