Advanced Interface for UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) Ground Control Stations

Abstract

(Abstract) The research presented in this paper focuses on an advanced interface in a UAV Ground Control Station whose aim is to guarantee a high level of situation awareness and a low level of workload in the control and supervision of unmanned vehicles. The interface is based on a touch screen—used to command the UAV by means of high level commands—and a 3D Virtual Display which provides a stereoscopic and augmented visualization of the complex scenario in which the vehicle operates. Good levels of situation awareness are also guaranteed by an audio feedback that informs the operator about any change in operational situation, as well as when the mission objectives have been accomplished. Test results have revealed that this interface provides the operator with good sense of presence and enhanced awareness of the mission scenario and the aircraft under his control. 4-6 . For that reason, the design process must consider the human factors associated with UAV. Specifically, human factors such as attention, perception and cognition in managing the vehicle - in its normal operating state or in abnormal situations - must be considered. High levels of situation awareness would allow the operator to become aware of the relevant elements in the operational space and their relationships, and behave proactively in order to optimize UAV system performances and take actions to forestall possible future problems 1, , 2 3 . New interfaces should also require a low level of operator workload. The aim is to allow the operators to manage the mission easily, controlling even more complex situations. Recent papers present interfaces designed to satisfy such requirements 4-8 and allow the operator to deal with different degrees of vehicle autonomy. In each paper the architecture of the interface, tests and results are described. The interface detailed in ref. 4 comprises three display formats and supports a mouse and keyboard as input device. A Situation Awareness format provides the operator with a dynamic, large-scale presentation of the mission area. A UAV status format provides information about health and status of the vehicle. Finally, a multifunction format is used to manage most of the mission events. In order to test such interface, preplanned mission are simulated and managed by tester operators. They have to monitor the progress of the vehicle flight and adjust the path if unplanned events occur. Different levels of system automation and the time required to accomplish a task are the experimental variables. The results reveal that the testers maintain a good level of situation awareness and that they prefer a level of automation that allows them to select one solution among several produced by the system when path adjustments are needed. Ref. 6, 7, 8 describe an interface and present test results. Such an interface combines virtual representation, 2D visualization of operational space and flight parameters, and also supports different input devices, such as joystick, motion tracker and voice recognition. In this case the tester operator has to supervise the acquisition of imageries and the designation of target objectives while watching out for the pop-up warning signal (i.e. appearance of other vehicles and changes in a mission mode indicator). The time and placement of the pop-up is planned by an experiment designer before the experiments start. Again two levels of automation, called management by consent and management by exception, are considered. The results show that the virtual display