Tracking with Head Position Using an Electrooptical Monitor

An electrooptical head-position monitoring system was designed and built and is used in single-axis and three-axis ``hands-off´´ control tasks. The monitor consists of a transparent plexiglass body-fixed helmet provided with a set of eight silicon photodetectors sensing pitch, roll, and yaw motions of the head. Two light-emitting diodes, attached to the pilot´s helmet liner, provide the ac modulated near infrared radiation. Head control is compared with conventional manual control for single-axis and three-axis tracking tasks. Both performance curves and describing functions are presented.