Surface Combatants of the Future - Reduced Crew Warships

Abstract

Accounting for the human element in complex systems is difficult. Unfortunately this has often meant that the human element is not accounted for, resulting in systems performing below expectations. Future Navy ships and systems are anticipated to be even more complex exasperating this problem. The design problem is made more challenging with the DoD requirement for significant life cycle cost reductions through a reduced crew ship. Optimizing the make up of this reduced crew requires the development of new design processes and tools. This paper addresses DD 21 and Office of Naval Research integrated research and development effort to develop human performance models and metrics for use in the human centered design environment consisting of a human centered design process and an accompanying toolset. These models, metrics, processes, and tools support the development of advanced human computer interface technologies that comprise the advanced multimodal watchstation, but are applicable to the larger design space of total ship.