A Full Mission Simulation Success Story: RPA Simulation at CSRDF Yields Promising Results

Abstract

In support of the US Army's Rotorcraft Pilot's Associate Advanced Technology Demonstration Program, the Crew Station Research and Development Branch (CSRDB) at NASA's Ames Research Center has recently completed a full mission simulation (FMS) experiment testing two alternative mission equipment packages (MEPs). Four crews of Army helicopter pilots flew 64 trials, performing representative combat helicopter tasks. Objective and subjective performance metrics provided statistically significant data supporting a priori hypotheses about performance differences between the two systems. Crews flying the advanced MEP killed more targets more efficiently, and were killed fewer times than when flying the baseline MEP. In addition, their workload was lower, and subjectively assessed situation awareness was higher with the advanced system. These results are encouraging for full mission simulation research, and suggest that a standard empirical model may in fact be applicable to full mission simulation.

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