CONTROLLER DESIGN: INTERACTIONS OF CONTROLLING LIMBS, TIME-LAGS AND GAINS IN POSITIONAL AND VELOCITY SYSTEMS

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Abstract
The effectiveness of the thumb, hand and forearm were compared in operating joystick controls of both a positional servo-mechanism and a velocity system. The angular displacement sensitivity (gain) and exponential time constant (lag) of the systems were systematically varied. The operator's task was to manipulate a joystick in order to move a display marker a constant distance to a specified degree of accuracy. The times taken to do this were used to compare performances in the different control conditions. Two experiments were conducted. In the first, in which a positional system was used, optimal angular gain changed through a range- from 0-15 to 0 50 as lags increased from 0 to 2 sec. Curve-fitting to the results enabled formulae to be derived to estimate the times required to complete accurate movements if control gain and lag arc known, and to determine the optimum control gain if the lag is known. In the second experiment, in which a velocity system was used, optimal angular gain was about 1-3 radians/sec of display movement to 1 radian of joystick movement in all conditions of control and for all controlling limbs.

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