Shipboard Communications: Quantifying Operator Capabilities and Limitations

Abstract

As the United States Navy moves towards a reduction in manning aboard future ships, the number and complexity of tasks the warfighter must perform remains high. One responsibility of the warfighter that is very taxing on his/her audio channel is the handling of voice communications. To determine the “breaking point” in handling these voice communications, researchers used a fully developed scenario to test the capabilities and limitations of typical Navy watchstanders when subjected to a varying number of active communications circuits. Metrics such as accuracy and latency of response were used to measure human performance. In addition, a between-subject experiment was used to determine whether or not a simulated speech-to-text tool would help to improve warfighter performance on a communications task, while not degrading performance on a primary, tactical task. The experiment was performed in the Integrated Command Environment (ICE) lab at NAVSEA Dahlgren, a testbed for future command and control concepts and a vehicle to solicit valuable feedback from members of the fleet.

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