Level Of Situation Awareness Research Articles

Bringing Adaptive and Immersive Interfaces to Real-World Multi-Robot Scenarios: Application to Surveillance and Intervention in Infrastructures

Multiple robot missions imply a series of challenges for single human operators, such as managing high workloads or maintaining a correct level of situational awareness. Conventional interfaces are not prepared to face these challenges; however, new concepts have arisen to cover this need, such as adaptive and immersive interfaces. This paper reports the design and development of an adaptive and immersive interface, as well as a complete set of experiments carried out to establish comparisons with a conventional one. The interface object of study has been developed using virtual reality to bring operators into scenarios and allow an intuitive commanding of robots. Additionally, it is able to recognize the mission’s state and show hints to the operators. The experiments were performed in both outdoor and indoor scenarios recreating an intervention after an accident in critical infrastructure. The results show the potential of adaptive and immersive interfaces in the improvement of workload, situational awareness and performance of operators in multi-robot missions.

An Adaptive System Based on Situation Awareness for Goal-Driven Management in Container Terminals

Lack of situation awareness when dealing with complex dynamic environments is recognized as one of the main causes of human errors that may lead to serious incidents, poor performance, etc. Thus, there is a need to define systems able to support operators in focusing their attention on active goals and, when really needed, switching them on more suitable goals, in a sort of continuous adaptation. This paper proposes an adaptive goal selection approach capable of suggesting the goal on which human operators should focus their attention to maintain an adequate level of situation awareness. The approach has been implemented in a Decision Support System for the management of operations in a port container terminal. An evaluation of the system applied to the container terminal of Salerno (Italy) has been realized by using the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT), a well-known methodology for evaluating SA in operational contexts. An evaluation of the performance has been executed to demonstrate that the approach helps to improve the performance of the logistics operations.

Perfusion techniques in minimally invasive setting

Further development and improvement of extracorporeal circulation (ECC) is paramount for the success in ‘minimally invasive cardiac surgery’. This requires advance in underling technology as well as a special mindset and a high level of situation awareness of perfusionist in order to balance safe perfusion and providing optimal conditions for the surgeon to operate. The necessity of this balance influences all stages of preparing and performing the surgical intervention and involve selection of equipment, methods and level of control of patient’s homeostasis and timely compensation for necessary deviations. There are examples presented: selection of heart-lung machine set and cannulation, and a choice of the method of preventing effective heart contraction during minimal invasive cardiac surgery. These examples demonstrate that decisions in minimal invasive setting is often a ‘maze’ choice with impact at all stages of intervention and all specialists involved. The team approach that coordinates efforts of the surgeon, anesthesiologist, perfusionist, and nurses is paramount to achieve the best clinical outcomes.

Validation of an Adaptive Alarm Interface Design for Digital Control Panels

ABSTRACTThis study proposes an adaptive alarm interface, which is supposed to have the good features of both alarm–tile interfaces that are typical in nuclear power plants (NPPs), and alarm–bar interfaces that use changing bars to indicate the current condition of an NPP and its abnormalities. Depending on the situation, the alarm management system will decide whether the alarm–tile or the alarm–bar interface should be presented to operators. To validate the usability of the adaptive alarm interface, it was compared against both the alarm–tile and alarm–bar interfaces through laboratory experiments with 45 participants. The results demonstrated that the adaptive alarm interface not only allowed the understanding of parameter trending, which was a distinguishing feature of the alarm–bar interface, but also improved the alarm detection, which was one advantage of the alarm–tile interface. However, the situation awareness level of the adaptive alarm interface was insufficient compared to the alarm–tile and bar interfaces possibly due to distraction from interface swapping.

Cross-task cue utilisation and situational awareness in simulated air traffic control

ObjectiveTo examine the role of cross-task cue utilisation in the acquisition of situational awareness during the initial stages of learning to operate an air traffic control simulation. BackgroundCue-based associations are an important component of situational awareness, a construct that is necessary for skilled process control, where the location, movement, and direction of multiple targets needs to be managed. However, the potential for high levels of situational awareness is difficult to assess in the absence of exposure. Previous research suggests that cross-task cue utilisation predicts the acquisition of feature-event associations that form the basis of situational awareness MethodSixty university students undertook an assessment of cue utilisation in the context of motor vehicle driving and subsequently engaged in an air traffic control simulation task. During the air traffic control simulation task, situational awareness queries were introduced based on the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Test (SAGAT). ResultsThe analyses revealed that participants who demonstrated relatively higher levels of cross-task cue utilisation also demonstrated greater performance on the SAGAT and achieved greater performance during the simulated air traffic control task. ConclusionThe outcomes suggest a relationship between cross-task cue utilisation and situational awareness, particularly at the initial stages of skill acquisition. ApplicationAssessments of cross-task cue utilisation may be used to distinguish the propensity for prospective trainees to acquire the situational awareness necessary for complex, process control tasks such as air traffic control.

Operator situation awareness and physiological states during offshore well control scenarios

Incident reviews of oil spill events (both large and small) suggest that human error is a contributor to 50% of well control incidents (primarily kicks). The purpose of this study was to examine operator situation awareness (SA) and associated physiological load, using heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), during different simulated offshore well control scenarios (drilling and tripping) and criticality levels (failure presented or not). Ten trained participants completed four scenarios (tripping non-failure, tripping failure, drilling non-failure, and drilling-failure) in an experimental session, lasting ∼6 h. Measures were obtained for each scenario, including speed and accuracy of the task performance, composite scores obtained from the Situational Awareness Rating Technique (SART), and operator heart rate and heart rate variability measures. Greater errors were found in kick-related failure events, and drilling scenarios were associated with longer reaction times. Participants perceived lower SA levels during drilling scenarios, and the was observed for lowest SA during drilling failure scenarios. Finally, while physiological responses did not differ significantly for any of the four scenarios, elevated heart rate was observed with drilling and failure-related scenarios. High variability in participant covert and overt responses may increase the challenges associated with classifying high-risk well control scenarios. It is critical that scenario planners understand and recognize the variability in driller situation awareness and associated physiological load when planning for alternative future scenarios.

Examining the Relationship between Construction Workers’ Visual Attention and Situation Awareness under Fall and Tripping Hazard Conditions: Using Mobile Eye Tracking

The risk of major occupational accidents involving tripping hazards is commonly underestimated with a large number of studies having been conducted to better understand variables that affect situation awareness: the ability to detect, perceive, and comprehend constantly evolving surroundings. An important property that affects situation awareness is the limited capacity of the attentional system. To maintain situation awareness while exposed to tripping hazards, a worker needs to obtain feedforward information about hazards, detect immediate tripping hazards, and visually scan surroundings for any potential environmental hazards. Despite the importance of situation awareness, its relationship with attention remains unknown in the construction industry. To fill this theoretical knowledge gap, this study examines differences in attentional allocation between workers with low and high situation awareness levels while exposed to tripping hazards in a real construction site. Participants were exposed to tripping hazards on a real jobsite while walking along a path in the presence of other workers. Situation awareness was measured using the situation awareness rating technique, and subjects’ eye movements were tracked as direct measures of attention via a wearable mobile eye tracker. Investigating the attentional distribution of subjects by examining fixation-count heat maps and scan paths revealed that as workers with higher situation awareness walked, they periodically looked down and scanned ahead to remain fully aware of the environment and its associated hazards. Furthermore, this study quantitatively compared the differences between the eye-tracking metrics of worker with different situation awareness levels (low versus high) using permutation simulation. The results of the statistical analysis indicate that subjects did not allocate their attention equally to all hazardous areas of interest, and these differences in attentional distribution were modulated by the workers’ level of situation awareness. This study advances theory by presenting one of the first attempts to use mobile eye-tracking technology to examine the role of cognitive processes (i.e., attention) in human error (i.e., failure to identify a hazard) and occupational accidents.

P049: Changes in situational awareness of emergency teams in simulated trauma cases using an RSI checklist

Introduction: Situational awareness (SA) is the team understanding patient stability, presenting illness and future clinical course. Losing SA has been shown to increase safety-critical events in multiple industries. SA can be measured by the previously validated Situational Awareness Global Assessment Tool (SAGAT). Checklists are used in many safety-critical industries to reduce errors of omission and commission. An RSI checklist was developed from case review and published evidence.The New Brunswick Trauma Program supports an inter-professional simulation-based medical education program Methods: Simulations were facilitated in three hospitals in New Brunswick from April 2017 to October 2017. Learner profiles were collected. The SAGAT tool was completed by a research nurse at the end of each scenario. SAGAT scores were non-normally distributed, so results were expressed as medians and interquartile ranges. Mann Whitney U tests were used to calculate statistical significance. To understand the effect of the of an RSI checklist a comparison was made between SAGAT scores at baseline in scenario 1, and the same first scenario completed after a washout period. A Poisson regression analysis will be used to account for the effect of confounding variables in further analyses. Results: The group was composed of Registered Nurses (8), Physicians (7), and Respiratory Therapists (2). Situational awareness increased significantly with the use of an RSI checklist after 1 day of 4 simulations. The washout period ranged between 5 weeks and 8 weeks. The baseline situational awareness of the whole group during scenario 1 was 9 +/− 0.5 (median, IQR), and with the RSI checklist was 12 +/−1 (median, IQR). The difference was highly statistically significant, p=< 0.001. This level of situational awareness using checklist is comparable to the SAGAT scores after 10 scenarios. Conclusion: In this provisional analysis, the use of an RSI checklist was associated with an increase in measured situational awareness. Higher levels of situational awareness are associated with greater patient safety. A Poisson regression model will be used to understand the confounding effects of user expertise and the likely interaction with simulation exposure.

Sonification of network traffic flow for monitoring and situational awareness.

Maintaining situational awareness of what is happening within a computer network is challenging, not only because the behaviour happens within machines, but also because data traffic speeds and volumes are beyond human ability to process. Visualisation techniques are widely used to present information about network traffic dynamics. Although they provide operators with an overall view and specific information about particular traffic or attacks on the network, they often still fail to represent the events in an understandable way. Also, because they require visual attention they are not well suited to continuous monitoring scenarios in which network administrators must carry out other tasks. Here we present SoNSTAR (Sonification of Networks for SiTuational AwaReness), a real-time sonification system for monitoring computer networks to support network administrators’ situational awareness. SoNSTAR provides an auditory representation of all the TCP/IP traffic within a network based on the different traffic flows between between network hosts. A user study showed that SoNSTAR raises situational awareness levels by enabling operators to understand network behaviour and with the benefit of lower workload demands (as measured by the NASA TLX method) than visual techniques. SoNSTAR identifies network traffic features by inspecting the status flags of TCP/IP packet headers. Combinations of these features define particular traffic events which are mapped to recorded sounds to generate a soundscape that represents the real-time status of the network traffic environment. The sequence, timing, and loudness of the different sounds allow the network to be monitored and anomalous behaviour to be detected without the need to continuously watch a monitor screen.

A Review of Situation Awareness Assessment Approaches in Aviation Environments

Situation awareness (SA) is an important constituent in human information processing and essential in pilots' decision-making processes. Acquiring and maintaining appropriate levels of SA is critical in aviation environments as it affects all decisions and actions taking place in flights and air traffic control. This paper provides an overview of recent measurement models and approaches to establishing and enhancing SA in aviation environments. Many aspects of SA are examined including the classification of SA techniques into six categories, and different theoretical SA models from individual, to shared or team, and to distributed or system levels. Quantitative and qualitative perspectives pertaining to SA methods and issues of SA for unmanned vehicles are also addressed. Furthermore, future research directions regarding SA assessment approaches are raised to deal with shortcomings of the existing state-of-the-art methods in the literature.

Reachable set computation for spacecraft relative motion with energy-limited low-thrust

For spacecraft in formation flight, the knowledge on a reachable set for their relative motion is crucial as it can be used to 1) assess their operational capability and plan tasks accordingly, and 2) predict the operational boundary of neighboring spacecraft, from which the collision probability can be effectively monitored, improving the level of situational awareness. In this paper, a new approach for reachable set computation is proposed that computes accurate inner and outer approximations of the reachable set for a spacecraft's relative motion with energy-limited low thrust. Finding the exact boundary of the reachable set requires solving an optimal control problem with infinitely many sets of initial and terminal conditions, which is intractable. To overcome this difficulty, an analytical solution to the optimal control problem is introduced, and an ellipsoidal approximation method is applied to the solution to find two inner and outer ellipsoids that approximate the exact boundary of the reachable set. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with illustrative numerical examples.

Enhancing Situation Awareness Using Semantic Web Technologies and Complex Event Processing

Data fusion techniques combine raw data of multiple sources and collect associated data to achieve more specific inferences than what could be attained with a single source. Situational awareness is one of the levels of the JDL, a matured information fusion model. The aim of situational awareness is to understand the developing relationships of interests between entities within a specific time and space. The present research shows how semantic web technologies, i.e. ontology and semantic reasoner, can be used to describe situations and increase awareness of the situation. As the situation awareness level receives data streams from numerous distributed sources, it is necessary to manage data streams by applying data stream processor engines such as Esper. In addition, in this research, complex event processing, a technique for achieving related situational in real-time, has been used, whose main aim is to generate actionable abstractions from event streams, automatically. The proposed approach combines Complex Event Processing and semantic web technologies to achieve better situational awareness. To show the functionality of the proposed approach in practice, some simple examples are discussed.

Optimizing Situational Awareness in Disaster Response Networks

In a wireless disaster response network, how does the quality of experience (QoE) of the user affect the level of situational awareness (SA)? Is maximum QoE necessary for high SA? In this empirical study, we propose a novel measurement approach to quantify SA based on the QoE of the user. The relationship between QoE and network quality of service (QoS) metrics such as delay and packet loss is well known. Therefore, quantifying the SA-QoE-QoS relationship will help the network operator to ensure a high level of SA when the network is under load, through parsimonious allocation of network resources such as spectrum and power. We first define an objective expression for SA in four contexts: surroundings awareness, target awareness, location awareness, and responsiveness (SETLR model). Using empirical data gathered from real-world experiments, we mathematically formulate SA as a function of QoE and show that this relationship is logistic in nature. An important observation is that maximum QoE is not necessary to ensure high SA; a mean opinion score of just 2-3 is necessary in our scenario. Next, we show through simulations that this new mathematical model of SA can be instantiated in a long-term evolution radio access network and efficiently used in network optimization techniques to avoid over-provisioning of resources.

Nationwide critical infrastructure monitoring using a common operating picture framework

This paper describes the efforts involved in designing a common operating picture system for monitoring large-scale critical infrastructures. The design leverages the Joint Directors of Laboratories (JDL) data fusion model to enable the integration of different critical infrastructure systems with their dependency relations. The resulting Situational Awareness of Critical Infrastructure and Networks (SACIN) framework offers a platform that provides a common operating picture of a critical infrastructure. A generic data collection component customized to each source system generates events and facilitates JDL level 0 integration. An analysis component collects events and data to produce meaningful information about the current state and future impact estimates in accordance with JDL levels 1 to 3. A brokered architecture supports level 4 control by various components and a JDL level 5 user interface is offered via a web application. Interviews of infrastructure subject matter experts were conducted to obtain the situational awareness requirements. By applying key situational awareness oriented design principles to the situational awareness requirements, a user interface was created for organizing information based on operator situational awareness needs and supporting key cognitive mechanisms that transform data into high levels of situational awareness. Situational awareness measures were used to assess operator performance during critical infrastructure tasks – a “freeze-probe” recall approach (Situational Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT)), a post-trial subjective rating approach (Situational Awareness Rating Technique (SART)) and the System Usability Scale (SUS). The results indicate that the supply of attentional resources (SART supply) and overall SAGAT score best predict the performance levels of operators.

Situational awareness within objective structured clinical examination stations in undergraduate medical training - a literature search

BackgroundMedical students may not be able to identify the essential elements of situational awareness (SA) necessary for clinical reasoning. Recent studies suggest that students have little insight into cognitive processing and SA in clinical scenarios. Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) could be used to assess certain elements of situational awareness. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature with a view to identifying whether levels of SA based on Endsley’s model can be assessed utilising OSCEs during undergraduate medical training.MethodsA systematic search was performed pertaining to SA and OSCEs, to identify studies published between January 1975 (first paper describing an OSCE) and February 2017, in peer reviewed international journals published in English. PUBMED, EMBASE, PsycINFO Ovid and SCOPUS were searched for papers that described the assessment of SA using OSCEs among undergraduate medical students. Key search terms included “objective structured clinical examination”, “objective structured clinical assessment” or “OSCE” and “non-technical skills”, “sense-making”, “clinical reasoning”, “perception”, “comprehension”, “projection”, “situation awareness”, “situational awareness” and “situation assessment”. Boolean operators (AND, OR) were used as conjunctions to narrow the search strategy, resulting in the limitation of papers relevant to the research interest. Areas of interest were elements of SA that can be assessed by these examinations.ResultsThe initial search of the literature retrieved 1127 publications. Upon removal of duplicates and papers relating to nursing, paramedical disciplines, pharmacy and veterinary education by title, abstract or full text, 11 articles were eligible for inclusion as related to the assessment of elements of SA in undergraduate medical students.DiscussionReview of the literature suggests that whole-task OSCEs enable the evaluation of SA associated with clinical reasoning skills. If they address the levels of SA, these OSCEs can provide supportive feedback and strengthen educational measures associated with higher diagnostic accuracy and reasoning abilities.ConclusionBased on the findings, the early exposure of medical students to SA is recommended, utilising OSCEs to evaluate and facilitate SA in dynamic environments.

Situational Awareness and Time to Takeover: Exploring an Alternative Method to Measure Engagement with High-Level Automation

Within human factors research of highly automated driving, in addition to examining the design of notifications of expected takeovers of vehicle control, understanding how drivers handle unexpected takeovers is of critical importance. Given a sufficient level of situational awareness has been shown as a premise for task performance in various domains, this study aims to establish a situational awareness measure in the context of highly automated driving using a simple platform for experimentation. In this study, we measured participants’ situational awareness when viewing a video of simulated automated system, and their time-to-takeover when vehicle automation failed unexpectedly (as indicated by an abnormal change of vehicle speed and lane position). The results verified the link between lower levels of situational awareness and longer time to respond to a takeover event, suggesting the potential use of the simple platform for experimentation and quick prototyping.

Criterion Variability in Binary Periscope Observation Decisions

Submarine control interfaces are developed with the assumption that the most important sources of variability are system and environment related. This study attempts to investigate the contribution of human sources of variability not related to the system or environment. In particular, this work focuses on criterion variability in initial contact decisions. Consistent with our understanding of signal detection theory as it relates to human decision making, we found significant variability in decisions caused by differences in response criterion/bias. We also found that the likelihood that stimuli matched a participant’s direction of bias affected their decisions in the direction of their criterion/bias. The results indicate the importance of criterion variability as a measured parameter for decisions requiring levels of situational awareness beyond simple detection.

Developing a head-mounted tactile prototype to support situational awareness

Abstract In this paper, we describe the design and evaluation of a head-mounted tactile prototype and multi-parameter coding scheme to support situational awareness among users. The head has been selected as the location for the interaction because it has been relatively under-researched compared to the torso or hands, and offers potential for hands-free attention direction and integration with new head and eyewear technology. Two studies have been conducted. The first examined the user's ability to discern three-parameter tactile signals presented at sites on the head. Findings highlighted that while multi-parameter cues could be interpreted with low error, challenges were faced when interpreting specific combinations of waveform and interval type, and when performing identification of interval pattern and stimulation location while visually-distracted. A second study investigated how use of the three-parameter tactile coding scheme impacted participants’ situational awareness under several exertion conditions. Significant interaction was found between the exertion conditions and subjective cognitive workload. The relationship between situational awareness phases of participant SAGAT assessment scores were consistent between conditions, with perception and prediction phases outpacing comprehension. This suggests, pending further study of the suitability of situational awareness evaluation methods for tactile perception, that quickly trained participants may struggle to understand multi-parameter coding intended to convey changing events. Interpretations of coding schemes were found to vary, highlighting the importance of carefully selecting and mapping signals for presentation. Insights from our study can support interface designers aiming to heighten levels of spatial and situational awareness among their users through use of the tactile channel.

Improving the visual momentum of tethered viewpoint displays using spatial cue augmentation

A tethered viewpoint in an operator interface visualizes remote situations according to a robot’s heading direction. The tethered view, adhering to the line-of-sight requirement, results lower visual momentum when visualizing dense environments, such as during indoor teleoperation tasks. This problem occurs because the tethered view only partially visualizes spatial information, unlike the bird’s-eye view. Operators are thus inhibited to build their spatial mental model because the transitions happen as the robot moves. This paper presents an approach to improve the visual momentum of the tethered view by complementing the omitted spatial information. The approach augments simplified spatial cues on the excluded areas of a tethered view. The cues are purportedly used to illuminate the basic spatial structure of the surroundings and can thus help operators in constructing their spatial mental models. Evaluation of the presented approach was conducted using a simulated telerobot environment. The results indicated that the augmented view possessed a higher visual momentum, which exhibited by the lowered workload and enhanced levels of both spatial perception and situational awareness.

Teleoperating Assistive Robots: A Novel User Interface Relying on Semi-Autonomy and 3D Environment Mapping

[abstFig src='/00290002/11.jpg' width='300' text='User-assisted pick and place task' ] Despite remarkable progress of service robotics in recent years, it seems that a fully autonomous robot which would be able to solve everyday household tasks in a safe and reliable manner is still unachievable. Under certain circumstances, a robot’s abilities might be supported by a remote operator. In order to allow such support, we present a user interface for a semi-autonomous assistive robot allowing a non-expert user to quickly asses the situation on a remote site and carry out subtasks which cannot be finished automatically. The user interface is based on a mixed reality 3D environment and fused sensor data, which provides a high level of situational and spatial awareness for teleoperation as well as for telemanipulation. Robot control is based on low-cost commodity hardware, optionally including a 3D mouse and stereoscopic display. The user interface was developed in a human-centered design process and continuously improved based on the results of five evaluations with a total of 81 novice users.