Performance Measurements on the MPI Stewart Platform

The report AGARD-AR-144 provides a framework for systematically assessing the dynamic characteristics of flight simulator motion systems. Several measurements defined in the report were performed on the Stewart platform located at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. The measurements were performed with a setup consisting of real-time hardware and an off-the-shelf IMU. Results indicated that the motion platform describing functions were very similar to the standard platform filters implemented by the motion system manufacturer, but included a time delay of 100 ms. The total noise of the system mainly consisted of stochastic and high-frequency non-linear components, that were attributed to the IMU. The measurements defined by AGARD-144 proved to provide useful insight into the platform characteristics.