Abstract
Current unmanned air vehicle (UAV) reconnaissance missions often require a high degree of crew coordination to successfully locate and identify ground targets. A study evaluated information conveyance display concepts designed to expedite transfer of target location information between two UAV operators. One crewmember, the Sensor Operator (SO), was responsible for locating and identifying targets by controlling a gimbaled camera's viewpoint. The second crewmember, the Air Vehicle Operator (AVO), obtained knowledge of potential target location and had to direct the SO to view the point of interest (POI). Independent variable included four display concepts superimposed on the SO's camera-view display (baseline: no added symbology, floating compass rose, telestrator, and combined compass rose and telestrator), two levels of initial target distance (near, far), and two repetitions. Dependent measures included time to designate target, slew path efficiency, situation awareness (SA) metrics, AVO secondary task workload metrics, and level-of-communication ratings. Twelve naïve participants acted as SO's while four rated pilots were trained on task and served as AVO's. Results revealed that conditions utilizing the telestrator concept resulted in significantly better performance, lower AVO workload, and less verbal communication then the baseline and compass rose conditions. The telestrator concept may have additional utility for potential targets identified by sources external to the UAV crew.
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