AUGMENTING HEADS-UP DISPLAYS WITH INTELLIGENT AGENTS: A HUMAN FACTORS APPROACH

Situational awareness, both tactical and strategic, is essential for humans engaged in complex tasks in civilian and military theaters of operation. Previous work has shown that heads-up displays are effective tools for providing critical information to operators in such situations. Hitherto, heads-up displays have been designed to relay instrument and sensor information to the operator in a topical, timely, and accurate manner. There is a large body of complementary work in the area of human factors that deals with presenting information to a user without detracting from the primary mission. This thesis investigates, measures, and validates the effectiveness of a framework to provide additional information to an operator in an augmented reality format. This thesis focuses on applications of heads-up displays for rotorcraft pilots. Virtual reality (VR) environments are augmented to accept externally computed situational awareness information using established frameworks for human systems engineering. These frameworks will ensure that such additional information will not negatively affect the operator\u27s cognition in performing mission-critical tasks. The research work described in this thesis will demonstrate that such augmented heads-up displays will provide civilian and military actors with enhanced tools for operational effectiveness, safety and survivability especially in critical situations

Agent-based performance assessment tool for general aviation operations under free flight

The objective of this research is to design and demonstrate an agent-based modeling and analysis tool for evaluating General Aviation (GA) pilot situation awareness under free flight air traffic management (ATM). A computational tool is developed to assess free flight's potential effect on GA operators, by combining an agent-based representation of the overall pilot/vehicle/ATM system with quantitative modelbased metrics of pilot SA. The model's performance is demonstrated in a set of simulation trials designed to measure the pilot agent's ability to recognize and correctly assess protected zone conflicts in free flight ATM, using information available from a hypothetical cockpit display of traffic information. A set of simulations is presented to examine the effect of sensor accuracy and attention allocation on pilot awareness of protected zone conflict hazards posed by intruder aircraft. The results show that reducing sensor accuracy leads to an increase in overall SA error, and that the pilot agent divides its attention over multiple traffic hazards in proportion to each intruder's hazard potential. This attention-sharing varies dynamically as the conflict situation changes, in a manner that is consistent with intuitive expectations

Applying Human Factors Principles In Aviation Displays: A Transition From Analog to Digital Cockpit Displays In The CP140 Aurora Aircraft

A flight test program that evaluated the results of a CP140 Aurora cockpit modernization project was conducted between May 2004 and October 2005. This paper uses the results of that test program to show how basic human factors principles were violated which led to the identification of multiple design deficiencies. This paper proposes that the failure to apply good human factors principles when designing aircraft displays can lead to unacceptable deficiencies. The result can be poor modal awareness, confusion in the cockpit, and often negative training for the pilots. In particular, four major deficiencies were analyzed to determine the specific human factors principles that were breached. The violations included a lack of concise and relevant feedback to the pilot, unclear and ambiguous annunciations, poor use of colour coding principles and logic, a lack of suitable attention capture cueing, inappropriate alert cueing, an absence of aural cueing during specific degraded modes of operation, excessive cognitive workload, and a failure to incorporate the pilot as the focal point of the display design, also known as a human centred design philosophy. Recommendations for system design enhancements are provided to ensure safe and effective operations of this prototype system prior to operational implementation. The evaluation of the prototype system design was conducted by a flight test team from the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment in Cold Lake, Alberta and supported by the Maritime Proving and Evaluation Unit in Greenwood, Nova Scotia. The test program encompassed a thorough review of system design documentation, abinitio training and preliminary testing in a Systems Integration Lab and 40 flight test missions. The recorded deficiencies were based upon the observations of two Qualified Test Pilots