1,092 research outputs found
Decision Support Design for Workload Mitigation in Human Supervisory Control of Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
As UAVs become increasingly autonomous, the multiple personnel currently required to operate
a single UAV may eventually be superseded by a single operator concurrently managing
multiple UAVs. Instead of lower-level tasks performed by today’s UAV teams, the sole operator
would focus on high-level supervisory control tasks such as monitoring mission timelines and
reacting to emergent mission events. A key challenge in the design of such single-operator
systems will be the need to minimize periods of excessive workload that could arise when
critical tasks for several UAVs occur simultaneously. To a certain degree, it is possible to predict
and mitigate such periods in advance. However, actions that mitigate a particular period of high
workload in the short term may create long term episodes of high workload that were previously
non-existent. Thus some kind of decision support is needed that facilitates an operator’s ability to
evaluate different options for managing a mission schedule in real-time.
This paper describes two decision support visualizations designed for supervisory control of four
UAVs performing a time-critical targeting mission. A configural display common to both
visualizations, named the StarVis, was designed to highlight potential periods of high workload
corresponding to the current mission timeline, as well as “what if” projections of possible high
workload periods based upon different operator options. The first visualization design allows an
operator to compare different high workload mitigation options for individual UAVs. This is
termed the local visualization. The second visualization is indicates the combined effects of
multiple high workload mitigation decisions on the timeline. This is termed the global
visualization. The main advantage of the local visualization is that options can be compared
directly; however, the possible effects of these options on the mission timeline are only indicated
for the individual UAV primarily affected by the decision. For the global visualization, different
decisions can be combined to show possible effects on the system propagated across all UAVs,
but the different alternatives of a single decision option alternative cannot be directly compared.
An experiment was conducted testing these visualizations against a control with no visualization.
Results showed that subject using the local visualization had better performance, higher
situational awareness, and no significant increase in workload over the other two experimental
conditions. This occurred despite the fact that the local and global StarVis displays were very
similar. Not only did the Global StarVis produce degraded results as compared to the local
StarVis, but those participants with no visualization performed as well as those with the global
StarVis. This disparity in performance despite strong visual similarities in the StarVis designs is
attributed to operators’ inability to process all the information presented in the global StarVis as
well as the fact that participants with the local StarVis were able to rapidly develop effective
cognitive problem strategies. This research effort highlights a very important design
consideration, in that a single decision support design can produce very different performance
results when applied at different levels of abstraction.Prepared for Kevin Burns, The MITRE Corporatio
A square root of the harmonic oscillator
Allowing for the inclusion of the parity operator, it is possible to
construct an oscillator model whose Hamiltonian admits an EXACT square root,
which is different from the conventional approach based on creation and
annihilation operators. We outline such a model, the method of solution and
some generalizations.Comment: RevTex, 10 pages in preprint form, no figure
Symplectic Geometry on Quantum Plane
A study of symplectic forms associated with two dimensional quantum planes
and the quantum sphere in a three dimensional orthogonal quantum plane is
provided. The associated Hamiltonian vector fields and Poissonian algebraic
relations are made explicit.Comment: 12 pages, Late
Metric On Quantum Spaes
We introduce the analogue of the metric tensor in case of -deformed
differential calculus. We analyse the consequences of the existence of such
metric, showing that this enforces severe restrictions on the parameters of the
theory. We discuss in detail the examples of the Manin plane and the
-deformation of . Finally we touch the topic of relations with the
Connes' approach.Comment: 7 pages (LaTeX), preprint TPJU 14/9
Worldview, Ideology, And Ceramic Iconography A Study Of Late Terminal Formative Graywares From The Lower Rio Verde Valley Of Oaxaca, Mexico
This study investigates worldview and ideology during the late Terminal Formative period (A.D. 100 – 250) in the lower RĂo Verde Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, through an analysis of iconography found on grayware ceramic serving vessels. The sample includes 457 vessels and sherds from 17 lower Verde sites obtained through excavations and surface collections between 1988 and 2009. Drawing upon theories of semiotics and style, this thesis identifies a suite of icons suggesting that ceramics were a medium for expressing regionally shared beliefs. Chatino potters carved common Formative period Mesoamerican themes into the walls of graywares, such as depictions of maize and climatic phenomena, which may have been part of a religious worldview rooted in the belief that humans and non-human deities shared a reciprocal relationship. People at RĂo Viejo, including elites, may have attempted to exploit this relationship, thought of as a ―sacred covenant‖ or agreement between humans and deities, to create a more centralized political entity during the late Terminal Formative Chacahua phase. By using iconographic graywares in socially and politically significant ritual activities such as feasting and caching events, elites imbued graywares with a powerful essence that would have facilitated the spread of the coded messages they carried. Based on statistical analyses of the diversity of iconographic assemblages from various sites, I argue that the assemblage of icons at RĂo Viejo, a late Terminal Formative political center in the lower Verde, indicates ideas likely originated at or flowed through this site
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