Development of pilot training requirements for Personal Aerial Vehicles

This paper describes research activities conducted at the University of Liverpool as part of the myCopter project into the development of training requirements for pilots of Personal Aerial Vehicles (PAVs). The work has included a Training Needs Analysis (TNA) to determine the skills required of a PAV pilot and the evaluation of a training programme that covers the development of the skills identified by the TNA. The effectiveness of the training programme has been assessed using the first three Levels of Kirkpatrick's method. The evaluation showed that the developed training programme was effective, in terms of engaging the trainees with the subject, and in terms of developing the skills required to fly a series of PAV-mission related tasks in a flight simulator

Towards the Development of a Flight Training Programme for Future Personal Aerial Vehicle Users

Interest in personal aerial vehicles (PAVs) is resurgent with several flying prototypes made possible through advances in the relevant technologies. Whilst the perceived wisdom is that these vehicles will be highly automated or autonomous, the current regulatory framework assumes that a human will always be able to intervene in the operation of the flight. This raises the possibility of manually operated PAVs and the requirement for an occupant flying training programme. This paper describes the development of training requirements for PAV pilots. The work includes a training needs analysis (TNA) for a typical PAV flight. It then describes the development of a training programme to develop the skills identified by the TNA. Five participants with no real flying experience, but varying levels of driving experience, undertook the training programme. Four completed the programme through to a successful simulation flight test of a commuter flight scenario. These participants evaluated the effectiveness of the training programme using the first three Levels of Kirkpatrick’s method. The evaluation showed that the developed training programme was effective, in terms of both trainee engagement and development of the handling skills necessary to fly PAV mission-related tasks in a flight simulator. The time required for the four successful participants to develop their core flying skills was less than 5 h. This duration indicates that future simulation PAV training would be commensurate with the training duration for current personal transportation modes

¿Cómo influye la riqueza genética de los abetos pirenaicos en su respuesta al cambio climático?

Noticia publicada por la Agencia Sinc: El Servicio de Información y Noticias Científicas (SINC) es la primera agencia pública de ámbito estatal especializada en información sobre ciencia, tecnología e innovación en español. En la página web de iAguaUn estudio demuestra que los abetares más antiguos son más tolerantes a condiciones de aumento de temperatura y disminución de precipitación. El mantenimiento de la diversidad ayuda a los expertos a contar con individuos adaptados, idóneos en las restauraciones, que eviten el decaimiento de la especie.N

Prediction and Simulator Verification of Roll/Lateral Adverse Aeroservoelastic Rotorcraft–Pilot Couplings

The involuntary interaction of a pilot with an aircraft can be described as pilot-assisted oscillations. Such phenomena are usually only addressed late in the design process when they manifest themselves during ground/flight testing. Methods to be able to predict such phenomena as early as possible are therefore useful. This work describes a technique to predict the adverse aeroservoelastic rotorcraft–pilot couplings, specifically between a rotorcraft’s roll motion and the resultant involuntary pilot lateral cyclic motion. By coupling linear vehicle aeroservoelastic models and experimentally identified pilot biodynamic models, pilot-assisted oscillations and no-pilot-assisted oscillation conditions have been numerically predicted for a soft-in-plane hingeless helicopter with a lightly damped regressive lead–lag mode that strongly interacts with the roll modeat a frequency within the biodynamic band of the pilots. These predictions have then been verified using real-time flight-simulation experiments. The absence of any similar adverse couplings experienced while using only rigid-body models in the flight simulator verified that the observed phenomena were indeed aeroelastic in nature. The excellent agreement between the numerical predictions and the observed experimental results indicates that the techniques developed in this paper can be used to highlight the proneness of new or existing designs to pilot-assisted oscillation

Metric-based vs peer-reviewed evaluation of a research output: Lesson learnt from UK’s national research assessment exercise

Purpose There is a general inquisition regarding the monetary value of a research output, as a substantial amount of funding in modern academia is essentially awarded to good research presented in the form of journal articles, conferences papers, performances, compositions, exhibitions, books and book chapters etc., which, eventually leads to another question if the value varies across different disciplines. Answers to these questions will not only assist academics and researchers, but will also help higher education institutions (HEIs) make informed decisions in their administrative and research policies. Design and methodology To examine both the questions, we applied the United Kingdom’s recently concluded national research assessment exercise known as the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 as a case study. All the data for this study is sourced from the openly available publications which arose from the digital repositories of REF’s results and HEFCE’s funding allocations. Findings A world leading output earns between £7504 and £14,639 per year within the REF cycle, whereas an internationally excellent output earns between £1876 and £3659, varying according to their area of research. Secondly, an investigation into the impact rating of 25315 journal articles submitted in five areas of research by UK HEIs and their awarded funding revealed a linear relationship between the percentage of quartile-one journal publications and percentage of 4* outputs in Clinical Medicine, Physics and Psychology/Psychiatry/Neuroscience UoAs, and no relationship was found in the Classics and Anthropology/Development Studies UoAs, due to the fact that most publications in the latter two disciplines are not journal articles. Practical implications The findings provide an indication of the monetary value of a research output, from the perspectives of government funding for research, and also what makes a good output, i.e. whether a relationship exists between good quality output and the source of its publication. The findings may also influence future REF submission strategies in HEIs and ascertain that the impact rating of the journals is not necessarily a reflection of the quality of research in every discipline, and this may have a significant influence on the future of scholarly communications in general. Originality According to the author’s knowledge, this is the first time an investigation has estimated the monetary value of a good research output