MEIE Capstone Project
Problem Statement
For our capstone project, we were approached by our capstone advisor to create a safe and user-friendly flight simulator chair. The chair must meet a number of requirements:
Replicates real-time airplane cockpit orientation from a flight simlator software
Has a range of ± 25° in pitch and roll simultaneously
Be capable of being powered by a single 110 VAC wall outlet source, drawing no more than 20A
Display instrumentation with outside view and integrate physical flight controls
Existing Designs
Prior Work and Phase 1
Phase 1 Design
As a phase 2 project, this exact project had been approached by another team of engineers in a prior year. Before we were able to begin in phase 2, we must assess the final prototype from phase 1 to determine its capabilities and limitations before we could begin to tackle the problem. From our investigation, we arrived at a series of conclusions about the design from phase 1.
Phase 1 spent considerable time and effort to investigate the user experience and ergonomics
User comfort and simulation peripherals
Display coverage of full field of view
Accuracy to aircraft cockpits
Accommodations for a variety of users
The mechanical design presented a series of mechanical limitations
limited load capacity
slow actuation speed
Final Design
Final Phase 2 Design
Our final design takes a novel mechanical approach to motion simulation which allowed us to provide an extensive list of features:
Rated for passengers up to 250 lbs
Reaches ± 25° of pitch and roll simultaneously
Consumes under 800W of power
Interprets angular position and velocity data from X-Plane to convert into linear movement
Final Phase 2 Design Components
Our design is comprised of a series of key subsystems integral to the function of the flight simulator chair
Chair Frame & Monitors (purple)
Lightweight frame w/ chair, monitors & flight controls
Telescoping Rod (green)
Couples movement of gantry to gimbal movement
Pitch-Roll Gimbal (blue)
Constrains the chair to two angular degrees of freedom (DOF)
Bolted Steel Frame (grey)
Supports the full weight of the chair frame, monitors, and rider
Ball Screw Actuated 2D Gantry (red)
Sets a cartesian point for the U-joint
