Human Factors Evaluation of Portable Electronic Devices in Tactical Aircraft

As the service life of aging military aircraft are extended and these aircraft are tasked with new missions they were never designed to support, military aircraft are constantly being upgraded with new systems and avionics. Additionally, many legacy aircraft have poor cockpit layouts or incorporate older displays that are not compatible with or require extensive modification to support these new technologies. Unfortunately, many acquisition programs do not have the luxury of an unlimited budget and schedule to complete the required upgrades. One alternative is to incorporate a portable electronic device or PED into the cockpit. These devices can provide moving maps, real time intelligence information, or simply transition to a paperless cockpit. Adding a PED can be a cheaper and easier alternative than redesigning the entire cockpit. Although PEDs have some cost and schedule benefits, the human factors concerns can often overshadow the money and time saved using these devices. This paper investigates the human factors and aircrew systems design considerations when integrating laptop, pentablet, and personal digital assistant (PDA) type devices into attack and strike-fighter fixed wing aircraft. The range of issues that human factors engineers must consider with any potential PED is wide-ranging, from display readability to operator training and from user interface to degraded system operation. This paper focuses on the hardware integration requirements for PEDs in tactical fixed wing aircraft. While software functionality and aircrew workload are important factors that must be considered for any system, these issues are outside the scope of this paper. When integrating a PED system, there are six critical operational issues (COI) every system must meet before it can be considered operationally effective and suitable for the cockpit environment. The six PED COIs are: The display must be easily readable under all anticipated lighting conditions ranging from direct sunlight to night time operations. Also, the display must have adequate off axis readability if the display is not in the pilot’s primary field of view or if shared by two crew members. The display lighting must be compatible with existing cockpit lighting, including night vision imaging systems (NVIS). Lighting compatibility affects both internal and external cockpit vision and the ability to shift focus from outside to inside the cockpit and vice versa. The input devices and controls must allow for fast, accurate data entry and system optimization to present mission critical information in the desired format at the appropriate time. The PED must be integrated into the cockpit so it is easily accessible to the pilot while not restricting the pilot’s access to other cockpit controls and displays. If the PED is used as an electronic kneeboard, it must be properly secured so the device remains firmly in place and is comfortable to wear, especially during dynamic maneuvering and extended combat missions. The PED must not interfere with normal and emergency ingress and egress, including the ejection process. Also, the PED should not increase the risk of injury during an emergency egress scenario. For each COI, military and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) human factors, cockpit guidelines, and specifications are outlined and applied to PED use in a military cockpit. This paper examines several fielded systems used in both commercial and military aviation, as well as potential Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) systems. Ground and flight test reports for fielded and developmental PEDs provide examples as to how these guidelines and specifications apply to PED integration into the cockpit. Finally, the author, a Navy test pilot with experience employing PEDs in tactical cockpits, provides an aviator perspective to these guidelines and specifications in a combat environment. Based on the PED COIs, military specifications presented, and lessons learned from currently deployed PED systems, five conclusions were made when conducting this evaluation: Pentablet computers are preferred over laptops and PDAs. PEDs should not serve as the primary indicator of safety of flight or mission critical information. Integrating COTS systems does not guarantee cost and schedule savings. Touch screens and reprogrammable push buttons are the optimum control option. PEDs should be mounted on kneeboards vice the instrument panel. PEDs have excellent potential to fulfill many roles in the tactical cockpit, including electronic checklists, navigation charts, and real time weapon system control. While PEDs may not be the perfect solution to many system integration problems, they are viable options that deserve further consideration by any program manager or acquisition professional

Securing Real-Time Internet-of-Things

Modern embedded and cyber-physical systems are ubiquitous. A large number of critical cyber-physical systems have real-time requirements (e.g., avionics, automobiles, power grids, manufacturing systems, industrial control systems, etc.). Recent developments and new functionality requires real-time embedded devices to be connected to the Internet. This gives rise to the real-time Internet-of-things (RT-IoT) that promises a better user experience through stronger connectivity and efficient use of next-generation embedded devices. However RT- IoT are also increasingly becoming targets for cyber-attacks which is exacerbated by this increased connectivity. This paper gives an introduction to RT-IoT systems, an outlook of current approaches and possible research challenges towards secure RT- IoT frameworks

The Dag-Brucken ASRS Case Study

In 1996 an agreement was made between a well-known beverage manufacturer, Super-Cola Taiwan, (SCT) and a small Australian electrical engineering company, Dag-Brücken ASRS Pty Ltd, (DB), to provide an automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS) facility as part of SCT’s production facilities in Asia. Recognising the potential of their innovative and technically advanced design, DB was awarded a State Premiers Export Award and was a finalist in that year’s National Export Awards. The case tracks the development and subsequent implementation of the SCT ASRS project, setting out to highlight how the lack of appropriate IT development processes contributed to the ultimate failure of the project and the subsequent winding up of DB only one year after being honoured with these prestigious awards. The case provides compelling evidence of the types of project management incompetency that, from the literature, appears to contribute to the high failure rate in IT projects. For confidentiality reasons, the names of the principal parties are changed, but the case covers actual events documented by one of the project team members as part of his postgraduate studies, providing an example of the special mode of evidence collection that Yin (1994) calls ‘participant-observation’

Maintenance Knowledge Management with Fusion of CMMS and CM

Abstract- Maintenance can be considered as an information, knowledge processing and management system. The management of knowledge resources in maintenance is a relatively new issue compared to Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and Condition Monitoring (CM) approaches and systems. Information Communication technologies (ICT) systems including CMMS, CM and enterprise administrative systems amongst others are effective in supplying data and in some cases information. In order to be effective the availability of high-quality knowledge, skills and expertise are needed for effective analysis and decision-making based on the supplied information and data. Information and data are not by themselves enough, knowledge, experience and skills are the key factors when maximizing the usability of the collected data and information. Thus, effective knowledge management (KM) is growing in importance, especially in advanced processes and management of advanced and expensive assets. Therefore efforts to successfully integrate maintenance knowledge management processes with accurate information from CMMSs and CM systems will be vital due to the increasing complexities of the overall systems. Low maintenance effectiveness costs money and resources since normal and stable production cannot be upheld and maintained over time, lowered maintenance effectiveness can have a substantial impact on the organizations ability to obtain stable flows of income and control costs in the overall process. Ineffective maintenance is often dependent on faulty decisions, mistakes due to lack of experience and lack of functional systems for effective information exchange [10]. Thus, access to knowledge, experience and skills resources in combination with functional collaboration structures can be regarded as vital components for a high maintenance effectiveness solution. Maintenance effectiveness depends in part on the quality, timeliness, accuracy and completeness of information related to machine degradation state, based on which decisions are made. Maintenance effectiveness, to a large extent, also depends on the quality of the knowledge of the managers and maintenance operators and the effectiveness of the internal & external collaborative environments. With emergence of intelligent sensors to measure and monitor the health state of the component and gradual implementation of ICT) in organizations, the conceptualization and implementation of E-Maintenance is turning into a reality. Unfortunately, even though knowledge management aspects are important in maintenance, the integration of KM aspects has still to find its place in E-Maintenance and in the overall information flows of larger-scale maintenance solutions. Nowadays, two main systems are implemented in most maintenance departments: Firstly, Computer Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), the core of traditional maintenance record-keeping practices that often facilitate the usage of textual descriptions of faults and actions performed on an asset. Secondly, condition monitoring systems (CMS). Recently developed (CMS) are capable of directly monitoring asset components parameters; however, attempts to link observed CMMS events to CM sensor measurements have been limited in their approach and scalability. In this article we present one approach for addressing this challenge. We argue that understanding the requirements and constraints in conjunction - from maintenance, knowledge management and ICT perspectives - is necessary. We identify the issues that need be addressed for achieving successful integration of such disparate data types and processes (also integrating knowledge management into the “data types” and processes)

Flight elements: Fault detection and fault management

Fault management for an intelligent computational system must be developed using a top down integrated engineering approach. An approach proposed includes integrating the overall environment involving sensors and their associated data; design knowledge capture; operations; fault detection, identification, and reconfiguration; testability; causal models including digraph matrix analysis; and overall performance impacts on the hardware and software architecture. Implementation of the concept to achieve a real time intelligent fault detection and management system will be accomplished via the implementation of several objectives, which are: Development of fault tolerant/FDIR requirement and specification from a systems level which will carry through from conceptual design through implementation and mission operations; Implementation of monitoring, diagnosis, and reconfiguration at all system levels providing fault isolation and system integration; Optimize system operations to manage degraded system performance through system integration; and Lower development and operations costs through the implementation of an intelligent real time fault detection and fault management system and an information management system