Predictor Operator in Pursuit and Compensatory Tracking

Abstract

The predictor operator is a well established property of a human controller in manual control systems with a pursuit display. For periodic inputs, the human controller has been shown to use what is called a synchronous tracking mode to improve system performance considerably. The performance change is most evident in the phase portion of the system's Bode plot. The present study investigated the predictor operator in a manual control system with a compensatory display and compared it to a pursuit display. Four types of input signal were used: (1) single sinusoids, (2) narrow-band summed sinusoids, (3) variable-band summed sinusoids, and (4) wide-band summed sinusoids. The frequency range was from 0.04 to 1.5 Hz. The data from pursuit tracking were similar to data obtained in several previous studies. In this study the predictor operator in compensatory tracking was found to be similar to the predictor operator in pursuit tracking. This indicates the ability of the predictor operator to function in the absence of much important visual information found in the pursuit display and which the compensatory display lacks.

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