Familiarity and Expertise in the Recognition of Vehicles from an Unmanned Ground Vehicle

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of familiarity and expertise in remote perception from unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). Fifty-two volunteers, of whom 23 were Army ROTC cadets, participated. They were first asked to identify vehicles on a written test, and scores from the test were used to predict the amount of information reported from a video recording, captured from a UGV camera, in a scaled MOUT facility. ROTC cadets are compared with the general subject pool in order to explore differences between civilian and military vehicle recognition. Results from a written vehicle recognition test indicate that all participants were most familiar with civilian vehicles and ROTC cadets were more familiar with military vehicles than the general population. Regression analyses revealed that both ROTC experience and vehicle familiarity were predictive of the amount of information correctly reported from the UGV camera video. We believe that training for expertise and motivation should be considered for future research.