An optimal control model of human response part I: Theory and validation

Application of optimal control and estimation theory is made to a wide class of problems in manual control. The situation considered is that for which the dynamical system being tracked is linear and is perturbed by an external white noise input. By assuming that the human behaves ''optimally'' in some sense, subject to his inherent psychophysical limitations, a quantitative model is developed for the response characteristics of the human operator. The resultant suboptimal model can be used to predict task performance, measured human controller describing functions, remnant and power spectra. The model is described in detail and is used to predict experimentally measured quantities for three simple, but basic, compensatory tracking tasks. In a companion paper the model is applied to study a complex VTOL hovering task.

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