Hugh Day-Smith Engineering
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Rolls Royce Future Flight Simulator
Brief
To deliver a modular flight simulator with the emphasis on simulating what it will be like to fly planes in the future as more and more workload is taken away from the pilot and how can the information which the pilot received be prioritized to make decision making more efficient.
Role
Engineer
Date
2020
The part of this build which I focused on specifically, was the side sticks. The software for the simulator was being developed at Cranfield University using the Unity game engine platform, which meant that the simplest way to get them working, was to modify an existing consumer joystick. This involved dismantling the joystick to extract the necessary components required to connect it to the Unity system.
From then on, came the more complicated job of the designing the sidestick profile. Being an engineer as opposed to a designer, means that I'm used to having straight edges to work with - so this was definitely one of my more challenging surfacing jobs!
As you can see from one of the images below, there were quite a few iterations. We reached a point where we couldn't get the design comfortable for all hand sizes. Eventually, we found a solution by physically modifying 3D prints until they felt comfortable for everyone. We then looked to a photogrammetry app to scan in this updated design. This ensured that the tweaks made to the CAD matched the physical model. Finally, we had a design that everyone was happy with and could be machined, ready for the electronics to go inside.
