The power of collaborative systems
The power of collaborative systems
Military forces of the future will use mixed manned and unmanned forces for a broad variety of functions: reconnaissance and surveillance, logistics and support, communications, forward-deployed offensive operations, and as tactical decoys to conceal maneuvers by manned assets. Among the most successful fielded unmanned systems are the SRAs (Small Robotic Assets), both SUAVs (Small Unmanned Air Vehicles) and SUGVs (Small Unmanned Ground Vehicles). Recent successes in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown their potential for revolutionizing the way US troops conduct war operations, including spotting and dealing with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), thus saving American lives.
There are many essential human factors that need to be optimized for the SRA operators themselves, and there is much R&D work being done to address these issues. Our SBIR Phase I project to develop Technology for Enhanced Command and Control of Small Robotic Assets (TECRA), however, which we are conducting together with the George Mason University Arch Lab under US Army Research Institute sponsorship, focuses on the equally important but relatively neglected problem of SUAV operator and unit commander team performance. It is important to assure that commander-operator team performance is optimized with respect to such key factors as efficient communication, coordinated teamwork, well distributed workload. This is particularly true as manning considerations make it more likely that one unit commander will control a number of small robotic assets, thus further complicating the team interactions.
Our approach will use adaptive and advanced robotic display methodology to enhance commander-operator shared situation awareness and structured language to facilitate efficient commander-operator communication, reducing command workload and increasing operational effectiveness. Our TECRA system is based on innovative technology products contributed by our team members; these include: George Mason University’s adaptive interface concept for effective human-system performance in the control of robotic assets, USC’s OmniView display concept for robots, Perceptronics Solutions’ Composable Command Language (CCL) and Mixed Initiative Team Performance Assessment System (MITPAS) a complete simulation environment and methodology to measure and assess the performance of teams involving both human and robotic elements.
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