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become increasingly autonomous, the multiple personnel currently required to operate a single UAV may eventually be superseded by a single operator concurrently managing multiple UAVs.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

Metric On Quantum Spaes

We introduce the analogue of the metric tensor in case of $q$-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 $q$-deformation of $SU(2)$. Finally we touch the topic of relations with the Connes' approach.Comment: 7 pages (LaTeX), preprint TPJU 14/9

The Impact of Intelligent Aiding for Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Schedule Management

There is increasing interest in designing systems such that the current many-to-one ratio of operators to unmanned vehicles (UVs) can be inverted. Instead of lower-level tasks performed by today’s UV teams, the sole operator would focus on high-level supervisory control tasks. A key challenge in the design of such single-operator systems will be the need to minimize periods of excessive workload that arise when critical tasks for several UVs occur simultaneously. Thus some kind of decision support is needed that facilitates an operator’s ability to evaluate different action alternatives for managing a multiple UV mission schedule in real-time. This paper describes two decision support experiments that attempted to provide UAV operators with multivariate scheduling assistance, with mixed results. Those automated decision support tools that provided more local, as opposed to global, visual recommendations produced superior performance, suggesting that meta-information displays could saturate operators and reduce performance.This research was sponsored by Boeing Phantom Work and Mitre, Inc

Modified Cooper Harper Scales for Assessing Unmanned Vehicle Displays

In unmanned vehicle (UV) operations, displays are often the only information link between operators and vehicles. It is essential these displays present information clearly and efficiently so that operators can interact with the UVs to achieve mission objectives. While there are a variety of metrics to evaluate displays, there is no current standardized methodology for operators to subjectively assess a display’s support and identify specific deficiencies. Such a methodology could improve current displays and ensure that displays under development support operator processes. This report presents a quasi- subjective display evaluation tool called the Modified Cooper-Harper for Unmanned Vehicle Displays (MCH-UVD) diagnosis tool. This tool, adapted from the Cooper-Harper aircraft handling scale, allows operators to assess a display, translating their judgments on potential display shortcomings into a number corresponding to a particular deficiency in operator support. The General MCH-UVD can be used to diagnose deficiencies for any UV display, while the Specific MCH-UVD is UV and mission specific in its evaluation of displays. This report presents the General MCH-UVD and provides guidance on how to adapt it to create a Specific MCH-UVD through the use of UV mission taxonomies and a questioning method. A UGV search mission case study provides a how-to guide example for generating a Specific MCH-UVD. The report also presents an experiment conducted to validate the MCH-UVD and assess if a mission-specific version is necessary, or if the general form of the MCH-UVD is sufficient for different UV display evaluation. The report concludes with discussion on how to administer the scale, when a Specific scale is necessary, MCH-UVD diagnosis tool limitations, and future work.Prepared for US Army Aberdeen Testing Cente

Quantum Principal Bundles and Corresponding Gauge Theories

A generalization of classical gauge theory is presented, in the framework of a noncommutative-geometric formalism of quantum principal bundles over smooth manifolds. Quantum counterparts of classical gauge bundles, and classical gauge transformations, are introduced and investigated. A natural differential calculus on quantum gauge bundles is constructed and analyzed. Kinematical and dynamical properties of corresponding gauge theories are discussed.Comment: 28 pages, AMS-LaTe

Z3_3-graded differential geometry of quantum plane

In this work, the Z$_3$-graded differential geometry of the quantum plane is constructed. The corresponding quantum Lie algebra and its Hopf algebra structure are obtained. The dual algebra, i.e. universal enveloping algebra of the quantum plane is explicitly constructed and an isomorphism between the quantum Lie algebra and the dual algebra is given.Comment: 17 page

SUq(2)SU_q(2) Lattice Gauge Theory

We reformulate the Hamiltonian approach to lattice gauge theories such that, at the classical level, the gauge group does not act canonically, but instead as a Poisson-Lie group. At the quantum level, it then gets promoted to a quantum group gauge symmetry. The theory depends on two parameters - the deformation parameter $\lambda$ and the lattice spacing $a$. We show that the system of Kogut and Susskind is recovered when $\lambda \rightarrow 0$, while QCD is recovered in the continuum limit (for any $\lambda$). We thus have the possibility of having a two parameter regularization of QCD.Comment: 26 pages, LATEX fil

Coadditive differential complexes on quantum groups and quantum spaces

A regular way to define an additive coproduct (or ``coaddition'') on the q-deformed differential complexes is proposed for quantum groups and quantum spaces related to the Hecke-type R-matrices. Several examples of braided coadditive differential bialgebras (Hopf algebras) are presented.Comment: 9 page

Seedling emergence and yield performance of wheat cultivars depending on seed vigor and sowing density.

Título em português: Emergência de plântulas e desempenho produtivo de cultivares de trigo em função do vigor de sementes e densidades de semeadura

Spectral noncommutative geometry and quantization: a simple example

We explore the relation between noncommutative geometry, in the spectral triple formulation, and quantum mechanics. To this aim, we consider a dynamical theory of a noncommutative geometry defined by a spectral triple, and study its quantization. In particular, we consider a simple model based on a finite dimensional spectral triple (A, H, D), which mimics certain aspects of the spectral formulation of general relativity. We find the physical phase space, which is the space of the onshell Dirac operators compatible with A and H. We define a natural symplectic structure over this phase space and construct the corresponding quantum theory using a covariant canonical quantization approach. We show that the Connes distance between certain two states over the algebra A (two ``spacetime points''), which is an arbitrary positive number in the classical noncommutative geometry, turns out to be discrete in the quantum theory, and we compute its spectrum. The quantum states of the noncommutative geometry form a Hilbert space K. D is promoted to an operator *D on the direct product *H of H and K. The triple (A, *H, *D) can be viewed as the quantization of the family of the triples (A, H, D).Comment: 7 pages, no figure