Photometric Measurement of Target-Background Contrast
Abstract
The Army has long been aware of the critical importance of surveillance activity in maximizing battlefield effectiveness. As a consequence, considerable effort has been directed toward developing a wide variety of surveillance systems. Surveillance system effectiveness is not simply a function of hardware component characteristics, but rather depends heavily on the performance of the human component. Thus, determination of human performance characteristics is necessary to adequately evaluate overall systems performance levels as well as to identify causal factors which contribute to suboptimal performance. The Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) has traditionally had a considerable interest in the evaluation of surveillance systems performance and has been particularly concerned with the performance of the human component under realistic operational conditions. In all surveillance systems the human component receives information about the tactical environment in either visual or auditory form, and most systems rely heavily on the observer's visual processes. For this reason the Army has recently been concerned with identifying and quantifying major variables affecting visual target detection performance of observers directly viewing a tactical scene (or remotely viewing a scene via a display).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1976
- Accession Number
- ADA076819
Entities
People
- Jack J. Sternberg
- Thomas D. Scott
Organizations
- U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences