It does not have to be “equal in strength to a pilot tugging hard on it” since there is normally no significant load applied by the stick to the hand (only the centering springs). So most every feedback should be noticeable.
And force feedback is being deployed right now on commercial planes. The Irkut MC-21 was supposed to be the first airliner featuring them, but the invasion of ukraine and subsequent sanctions nixed that (as the provider of the sticks is the french company Ratier-Figeac). Gulfstream’s 7th gen (GVII) also have active sticks, provided by BAE.
Audio feedback was added since AF 447 but as well known sound is one of the first thing to be blanked out in high stress situations. Physical feedback provides a second stimulus, and one which does not get ignored as much.
The planes are FBW, the side sticks have no mechanical linkage outside their control box, there is no cause for a pilot to input significant force on the stick, and thus most every feedback would be sensible. Unlike a 737, the pilots are not physically moving the control surfaces.
So it will work most of the time except when you really need to, when the other pilot is panicking and won't provide accurate answers.
No, because the point is that the other pilot will feel the action and thus know that there are conflicting input. The sticks can even synchronise their movements, that way pilots can both see and feel that their copilot is inputting.
That is the point, making the existence of conflicting input clearer.
> So it will work most of the time except when you really need to
No.
> when the other pilot is panicking and won't provide accurate answers.
The sticks support taking priority, so a pilot seeing that their copilot is panic-inputting would be trained to press and hold the priority takeover button, deactivating their copilot’s stick.
Whether it works the vast majority of the time, in practical situations, remains to be seen. Confusing a known, physically guaranteed, aspect of a system with an estimated likelihood of actual system performance is a common mistake.
Even with the most ideal deployment scenario, assuming it does get widely deployed one day, the real world performance reliability will likely not get anywhere near six sigma, let alone 100%.
Many aircraft controls already have force feedback in the form of stick pushers [1], a device to violently shake the control yoke when the aircraft is at risk of stalling. Those have been around since the 60's.
So this is not only possible, but it's been around for a long time though Airbus had chosen to use a verbal warning only instead of a stick shaker.
Are those really side sticks, though? They look much more like one half a yoke than the kind of side stick you'd see in, for example, an Airbus or an F-16.
https://github.com/scottbez1/smartknob
...or any not-bottom-end-of-market steering wheel for driving video games.
Yeah, good luck jury rigging some servos.
You'd need to run cables between them and redesign the sticks to have mechanical hooks, and it'd be a very ugly hack, but it's hardly impossible.
Not impossible for an unlimited budget.
The hack itself would be a small detail line on the overall budget for the changes.
The hack is the entirety of the cost, it would require completely redesigning the side-stick, updating their entire maintenance procedure (currently side-stick can trivially be unscrewed and swapped out), as well as redesigning the cabin cell to provide routing for the cables such that they keep tension and don't get damaged.
Stick manufacturers have been working on active sticks for more than two decades, and they're getting released right now. While force feedback on PC joysticks was introduced in 1997.