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

Aeronautical engineering: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 231)

This bibliography lists 469 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in September, 1988

A survey of free software for the design, analysis, modelling, and simulation of an unmanned aerial vehicle

The objective of this paper is to analyze free software for the design, analysis, modelling, and simulation of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Free software is the best choice when the reduction of production costs is necessary; nevertheless, the quality of free software may vary. This paper probably does not include all of the free software, but tries to describe or mention at least the most interesting programs. The first part of this paper summarizes the essential knowledge about UAVs, including the fundamentals of flight mechanics and aerodynamics, and the structure of a UAV system. The second section generally explains the modelling and simulation of a UAV. In the main section, more than 50 free programs for the design, analysis, modelling, and simulation of a UAV are described. Although the selection of the free software has been focused on small subsonic UAVs, the software can also be used for other categories of aircraft in some cases; e.g. for MAVs and large gliders. The applications with an historical importance are also included. Finally, the results of the analysis are evaluated and discussed—a block diagram of the free software is presented, possible connections between the programs are outlined, and future improvements of the free software are suggested. © 2015, CIMNE, Barcelona, Spain.Internal Grant Agency of Tomas Bata University in Zlin [IGA/FAI/2015/001, IGA/FAI/2014/006

A Cohesive Simulation and Testing Platform for Civil Autonomous Aerial Sensing and Operations

Drones (also known as sUAS or small Uncrewed Aerial Systems) are often flown with cameras to take images of an area of land. These images can then be used to create a map by stitching these images together. This map can then be analyzed using scientific principles to learn things about the land and make decisions or take action based on the information. The scientific application of drones is very advantageous, but flying a drone is inherently dangerous, impacting the safety of the airspace (particularly in the event of a crash), and drones are more dangerous the bigger they are. Smaller off-the-shelf drones are readily available to the public and are quite safe and easy to use. Larger near 55-lb fixed-wing mapping drones that can fly for 2.5 hours are quite costly and bring new risks into the equation. There are many barriers and risks to being able to successfully test equipment and to improving drone mapping technology. This research focuses on creating a simulator that can simulate the entire process of creating these scientific maps. Simulating a drone, a camera payload, and a world for the drone to fly over. By having a simulator, researchers will be able to test out new technologies without having to risk flying a drone or without having to overcome the challenges mentioned above. This research also focuses on creating a smaller simple camera payload that can be attached to a drone for performing test flights. This allows researchers to do scientific tests without risking flying larger systems. This work enables the testing of sUAS payload systems many times in the simulation and then, when the system works as it should, the test flights with an actual drone can commence. This reduces the amount of time it takes to develop scientific drone systems and reduces the risk of flight

Investigating Conformance Monitoring Issues in Air Traffic Control Using Fault Detection Approaches

In order to maintain Air Traffic Control (ATC) system safety, security and efficiency, conformance monitoring must be performed to ensure that aircraft adhere to their assigned clearances. New Decision Support Tools (DSTs), coupled to advanced communication, navigation and surveillance technologies are being developed which may enable more effective conformance monitoring to be undertaken relative to today. However, there are currently no general analysis techniques to help identify fundamental conformance monitoring issues and more effective approaches that new DSTs should employ. An approach to address this need is presented in this work that draws parallels between ATC conformance monitoring and general system fault detection, allowing fault detection methods developed for other domains to be employed for this new application. The resulting Conformance Monitoring Analysis Framework provides a structure to research conformance monitoring issues and approaches. Detailed discussions are presented for each of the elements of the framework, including the Conformance Basis, Actual System Representation, Conformance Monitoring Model, Conformance Residual Generation and Decision-Making components. Flight test data during a simple lateral non-conformance maneuver was used to demonstrate various implementation options of the framework. Application of the framework for ATC conformance monitoring research was demonstrated using flight test and simulator data in various operational and surveillance environments. Key findings in the lateral, vertical and longitudinal domains during non-transitioning and transitioning flight regimes are presented. In general, it was found that more effective conformance monitoring can be conducted relative to existing systems in the non-transitioning environments when advanced surveillance systems provide higher accuracy, higher update rate and higher order dynamic state information for use in more sophisticated DST algorithms. This is contrasted to the significantly greater conformance monitoring challenges that exist in the transitioning regimes due to Conformance Basis and modeling uncertainties. These challenges can be handled through the use of procedural design, higher fidelity modeling techniques or the surveillance of intent states. Two extended applications of the framework are also presented: a method for intent inferencing to determine what alternative trajectory a non-conforming aircraft may be following and a technique for environmental parameter estimation.This work was funded by the NASA Langley Research Center under grant NAG1-02006. Sincere thanks to Richard Barhydt & Mark Ballin for their support through this grant. The authors would also like to thank Mike Paglione at the FAA Technical Center and Len Tobias at the NASA Ames Research Center for earlier support through the FAA/NASA Joint University Program under grant FAA95-G-017

Aeronautical engineering: A cumulative index to a continuing bibliography (supplement 274)

This publication is a cumulative index to the abstracts contained in supplements 262 through 273 of Aeronautical Engineering: A Continuing Bibliography. The bibliographic series is compiled through the cooperative efforts of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Seven indexes are included: subject, personal author, corporate source, foreign technology, contract number, report number, and accession number

Developing Executable Digital Models with Model-Based Systems Engineering – An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Surveillance Scenario Example

There is an increase in complexity in modern systems that causes inconsistencies in the iterative exchange loops of the system design process and in turn, demands greater quality of system organization and optimization techniques. A recent transition from document-centric systems engineering to Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is being documented in literature from various industries to address these issues. This study aims to investigate how MBSE can be used as a starting point in developing digital twins (DT). Specifically, the adoption of MBSE for realizing DT has been investigated, resulting in various literature reviews that indicate the most prevalent methodologies and tools used to enhance and validate existing and future systems. An MBSE-enabled template for virtual model development was executed for the creation of executable models, which can serve as a research testbed for DT and system and system-of-systems optimization. This study explores the feasibility of this MBSE-enabled template by creating and simulating a surveillance system that monitors and reports on the health status and performance of an armored fighting vehicle via an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). The objective of this template is to demonstrate how executable SysML diagrams are used to establish a collaborative working environment between multiple platforms to better convey system behavior, modifications, and analytics for various system stakeholders

Virtual Reality

At present, the virtual reality has impact on information organization and management and even changes design principle of information systems, which will make it adapt to application requirements. The book aims to provide a broader perspective of virtual reality on development and application. First part of the book is named as "virtual reality visualization and vision" and includes new developments in virtual reality visualization of 3D scenarios, virtual reality and vision, high fidelity immersive virtual reality included tracking, rendering and display subsystems. The second part named as "virtual reality in robot technology" brings forth applications of virtual reality in remote rehabilitation robot-based rehabilitation evaluation method and multi-legged robot adaptive walking in unstructured terrains. The third part, named as "industrial and construction applications" is about the product design, space industry, building information modeling, construction and maintenance by virtual reality, and so on. And the last part, which is named as "culture and life of human" describes applications of culture life and multimedia-technology