Impact of Task Load and Gaze on Situation Awareness in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Control

Abstract

Increasing levels of automation and rising costs of manpower are pushing the DoD towards a supervisory control paradigm for future unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) missions. Using the Supervisory Control Operations User Testbed, a group of 20 participants completed two twenty minute supervisory control missions where eye tracking and performance data were collected. Each mission had 3 levels of task load; which were manipulated by varying the frequency of events to which the user responded. During each level, the simulation paused and a situation awareness (SA) probe appeared with all UAVs and targets randomly placed on the map. Participants were tasked to reconstruct the map. Results showed higher load was associated with a significant decrease in SA. Additionally, participants spent significantly less time looking at the map when the task load was high. These results suggest that eye gaze may be a useful predictor of SA within a supervisory control task.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 07, 2015
Accession Number
AD1024317

Entities

People

  • Ciara M. Sibley
  • Joseph T. Coyne

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Automation
  • Department Of Defense
  • Dwell Time
  • Environment
  • Eye
  • Eye Movements
  • Flight Simulators
  • Military Research
  • Psychology
  • Simulations
  • Situational Awareness
  • Supervisory Control
  • Unmanned Aerial Systems
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Unmanned Systems
  • Vehicles

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.
  • Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Autonomous Capabilities and Mission Reconnaissance.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - UAVs