Effect of Head-Slaved Visual Image Roll on Spatial Situation Awareness

Abstract

We examined whether the inclusion of a third head-slaved “roll” degree of freedom (dof)–in addition to pitch and yaw dofs–to control the orientation of a remotely-viewed or computer-synthesized scene can enhance spatial situation awareness. Six subjects were required to match the position and orientation of stationary target markers on a remote taskboard by manually placing response markers on an identical local taskboard. Subjects could only view the remote taskboard through images transmitted to a head mounted display (HMD) from a motorized pitch-yaw-roll camera platform; they could see neither the local taskboard nor their own limbs. Results show that, while systematic overshoot errors in azimuth judgment occurred regardless of the roll condition, the addition of the roll dof to the platform had no statistically discernible effect on the subjects' ability to match the position (i.e., azimuth and elevation) of the remote targets. Absence of the roll dof, however, did affect the subjects' judgment of target orientation when their heads were at maximum elevation (pitch) and azimuth (yaw) combinations.