Controlling Unmanned Vehicles: the Human Factors Solution
Abstract
Recent developments and experiences have proven the usefulness and potential of Unmanned Vehicles (UVs). Emerging technologies enable new missions, broadening the applicability of UVs from simple remote spies towards unmanned combat vehicles carrying lethal weapons. However, despite the emerging technology, unmanned does not implicate that there is no operator involved. Humans still excel in certain tasks, e.g. tasks requiring high flexibility or tasks that involve pattern perception, and decision making. An important subsystem in which the technology driven aspects and the human factors driven aspects of UVs meet is in the data-link between the remote vehicle and the operator. The human factors engineer wants to optimize operator performance, which may require a data-link with an extremely large capacity, while other design criteria typically limit the bandwidth (e.g. to lower costs, or because no more bandwidth is available in certain situations). This field of tension is the subject of the present paper. The paper describes two human factors approaches that may help to resolve this field of tension. The first approach is to reduce data-link requirements (without affecting operator performance) by presenting task-critical information only. Omitting information that is not needed by the operator to perform the task frees capacity. The second approach is to optimize performance by developing advanced interface designs which present task-critical information without additional claims on the data-link. An example will be given of both approaches.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADP010325
Entities
People
- Jan B. Van Erp