Pilot decision making during landing point designation

Abstract

Predicting astronaut performance when choosing where to land on the Moon, or the landing point designation task, is difficult. Human judgment and decision making for this application is not well-characterized. To address this knowledge deficiency, an experiment was designed to replicate the landing point designation task in both ideal and poor landing conditions. Fifteen helicopter pilots were observed to use one of two strategy types, with both strategies resulting in equatable performance. Regardless of strategy use, terrain contrast conditions were observed to have a significant impact on the selection of safe landing sites. Other aspects of performance, such as task completion time, were unaffected by terrain contrast. Pilots were also observed to be influenced by multiple terrain factors. Researchers noted twenty different types of actions stemming from nine categories of scenario cues. When these cue---action relationships are used in conjunction with pilots' evaluation criteria and a known strategy, models can be developed to predict decision making.