Download or read book The Effect of Appropriately and Inappropriately Applied Automation for the Control of Unmanned Systems on Operator Performance written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robotic technology will be a vital component of future combat. However, the combination of robotic operational tasks with other traditional military tasks will create high workload peaks during military operations. The objective of this research is to develop and evaluate flexible automation strategies to aid the operator in this complex military environment. In this experiment, we evaluated the effect of an automation that was invoked based on task load. Participants conducted a military reconnaissance mission using a simulation that required them to use an unmanned air vehicle sensor for target detection, monitor an unmanned ground vehicle, and respond to multi-level communications. Participants completed 16 missions in the environment, during which task load and automation were manipulated. The results of this experiment showed that operator performance did improve when the automation, an aided target-recognition system for the unmanned air vehicle, was invoked, relative to when it was not invoked. Further, when automation was appropriately applied (high task-load conditions), workload decreased significantly. This data, along with the results of other experiments discussed in this report, indicate that adaptive automation may be a useful mitigation strategy to help offset the potential deleterious effects of high cognitive load on U.S. Army robotic operators in a multitasking environment.

Download or read book The Effect of Level of Automation and Operator to vehicle Ratio on Operator Workload and Performance in Future UAV Systems written by Ryan J. Wasson and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study aims to help determine what levels of automation are most appropriate for different operator-to-vehicle ratios and how adaptive automation should be applied in future UAV systems."--Leaf 4.

Download or read book Autonomous Control Systems and Vehicles written by Kenzo Nonami and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-05-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Conference on Intelligent Unmanned Systems 2011 was organized by the International Society of Intelligent Unmanned Systems and locally by the Center for Bio-Micro Robotics Research at Chiba University, Japan. The event was the 7th conference continuing from previous conferences held in Seoul, Korea (2005, 2006), Bali, Indonesia (2007), Nanjing, China (2008), Jeju, Korea (2009), and Bali, Indonesia (2010). ICIUS 2011 focused on both theory and application, primarily covering the topics of robotics, autonomous vehicles, intelligent unmanned technologies, and biomimetics. We invited seven keynote speakers who dealt with related state-of-the-art technologies including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and micro air vehicles (MAVs), flapping wings (FWs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), underwater vehicles (UVs), bio-inspired robotics, advanced control, and intelligent systems, among others. This book is a collection of excellent papers that were updated after presentation at ICIUS2011. All papers that form the chapters of this book were reviewed and revised from the perspective of advanced relevant technologies in the field. The aim of this book is to stimulate interactions among researchers active in the areas pertinent to intelligent unmanned systems.

Download or read book Safety And Reliability In Cooperating Unmanned Aerial Systems written by Camille Alain Rabbath and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2010-01-25 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in the analysis and design of health management systems for cooperating unmanned aerial vehicles. Such systems rely upon monitoring and fault adaptation schemes. Motivation for their study comes from the fact that, despite the use of fault-tolerant control software and hardware embedded onboard air vehicles, overall fleet performance may still be degraded after the occurrence of anomalous events such as systems faults and failures. Cooperative health management (CHM) systems seek to provide adaptation to the presence of faults by capitalizing on the availability of interconnected computing, sensing and actuation resources.This monograph complements the proposed CHM concepts by means of case studies and application examples. It presents fundamental principles and results encompassing optimization, systems theory, information theory, dynamics, modeling and simulation. Written by pioneers in cooperative control, health management and fault-tolerant control for unmanned systems, this book is a unique source of information for designers, researchers and practitioners interested in the field.

Download or read book The Effect of Task Load Automation Reliability and Environment Complexity on UAV Supervisory Control Performance written by Sarah M. Sherwood and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last decade, military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have experienced exponential growth and now comprise over 40% of military aircraft. However, since most military UAVs require multiple operators (usually an air vehicle operator, payload operator, and mission commander), the proliferation of UAVs has created a manpower burden within the U.S. military. Fortunately, simultaneous advances in UAV automation have enabled a switch from direct control to supervisory control; future UAV operators will no longer directly control a single UAV subsystem but, rather, will control multiple advanced, highly autonomous UAVs. However, research is needed to better understand operator performance in a complex UAV supervisory control environment. The Naval Research Lab (NRL) developed SCOUTTM (Supervisory Control Operations User Testbed) to realistically simulate the supervisory control tasks that a future UAV operator will likely perform in a dynamic, uncertain setting under highly variable time constraints. The study reported herein used SCOUT to assess the effects of task load, environment complexity, and automation reliability on UAV operator performance and automation dependence. The effects of automation reliability on participants’ subjective trust ratings and the possible dissociation between task load and subjective workload ratings were also explored. Eighty-one Navy student pilots completed a 34:15 minute pre-scripted SCOUT scenario, during which they managed three helicopter UAVs. To meet mission goals, they decided how to best allocate the UAVs to locate targets while they maintained communications, updated UAV parameters, and monitored their sensor feeds and airspace. After completing training on SCOUT, participants were randomly sorted into low and high automation reliability groups. Within each group, task load (the number of messages and vehicle status updates that had to be made and the number of new targets that appeared) and environment complexity (the complexity of the payload monitoring task) were varied between low and high levels over the course of the scenario. Participants’ throughput, accuracy, and expected value in response to mission events were used to assess their performance. In addition, participants rated their subjective workload and fatigue using the Crew Status Survey. Finally, a four-item survey modeled after Lee and Moray’s validated (1994) scale was used to assess participants’ trust in the payload task automation and their self-confidence that they could have manually performed the payload task. This study contributed to the growing body of knowledge on operator performance within a UAV supervisory control setting. More specifically, it provided experimental evidence of the relationship between operator task load, task complexity, and automation reliability and their effects on operator performance, automation dependence, and operators’ subjective experiences of workload and fatigue. It also explored the relationship between automation reliability and operators’ subjective trust in said automation. The immediate goal of this research effort is to contribute to the development of a suite of domain-specific performance metrics to enable the development and/or testing and evaluation of future UAV ground control stations (GCS), particularly new work support tools and data visualizations. Long-term goals also include the potential augmentation of the current Aviation Selection Test Battery (ASTB) to better select future UAV operators and operational use of the metrics to determine mission-specific manpower requirements. In the far future, UAV-specific performance metrics could also contribute to the development of a dynamic task allocation algorithm for distributing control of UAVs amongst a group of operators.

Download or read book Operations Research for Unmanned Systems written by Jeffrey R. Cares and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-05-02 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edited volume addressing analysis for unmanned vehicles, with focus on operations research rather than engineering The editors have a unique combination of extensive operational experience and technical expertise Chapters address a wide-ranging set of examples, domains and applications Accessible to a general readership and also informative for experts

Download or read book On Integrating Unmanned Aircraft Systems into the National Airspace System written by Konstantinos Dalamagkidis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-11-14 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Commercial interest for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) has seen a steady increase over the last decade. Nevertheless, UAS operations have remained almost exclusively military. This is mainly due to the lack of a regulatory framework that allows only limited public and civil UAS operations with usually crippling restrictions. Although efforts from the Federal Aviation Administration and its partners are already underway to integrate UAS in the National Airspace System (NAS), the appropriate regulation will not be ready for several more years. In the meantime UAS developers need to be aware of the current operational restrictions, as well as make informed decisions on their research and development efforts so that their designs will be airworthy when the regulatory framework is in place. This monograph aims to present an overview of current aviation regulation followed by an investigation of issues and factors that will affect future regulation.

Download or read book Human Automation Interaction Considerations for Unmanned Aerial System Integration into the National Airspace System written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-05-11 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to 2012, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) technology had been primarily used by the military and hobbyists, but it has more recently transitioned to broader application, including commercial and scientific applications, as well as to expanded military use. These new uses encroach on existing structures for managing the nation's airspace and present significant challenges to ensure that UASs are coordinated safely and suitably with existing manned aircraft and air traffic management systems, particularly with the National Airspace System (NAS). Of particular concern is the interaction between human pilots, operators, or controllers and increasingly automated systems. Enhanced understanding of these interactions is essential to avoid unintended consequences, especially as new technologies emerge. In order to explore these issues, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine organized a 2-day workshop in January 2018. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Download or read book Applications of Intelligent Control to Engineering Systems written by Kimon P. Valavanis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-06-11 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reflects the work of top scientists in the field of intelligent control and its applications, prognostics, diagnostics, condition based maintenance and unmanned systems. It includes results, and presents how theory is applied to solve real problems.

Download or read book Automation Architecture for Single Operator Multiple UAV Command and Control written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In light of the Office of the Secretary Defense's Roadmap for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), there is a critical need for research examining human interaction with heterogeneous unmanned vehicles. The OSD Roadmap clearly delineates the need to investigate the "appropriate conditions and requirements under which a single pilot would be allowed to control multiple airborne UA (unmanned aircraft) simultaneously." Toward this end, in this paper, we provide a meta-analysis of research studies across unmanned aerial and ground vehicle domains that investigated single operator control of multiple vehicles. As a result, a hierarchical control model for single operator control of multiple unmanned vehicles (UV) is proposed that demonstrates those requirements that will need to be met for operator cognitive support of multiple UV control, with an emphasis on the introduction of higher levels of autonomy. The challenge in achieving effective management of multiple UV systems in the future is not only to determine whether automation can be used to improve human and system performance, but how and to what degree across hierarchical control loops, as well as determining the types of decision support that will be needed by operators given the high-workload environment. We address when and how increasing levels of automation should be incorporated in multiple UV systems and discuss the impact on not only human performance, but more importantly, on system performance.

Download or read book Developments and Challenges for Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles written by Anthony Finn and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-03-17 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely anticipated that autonomous vehicles will have a transformational impact on military forces and will play a key role in many future force structures. As a result, many tasks have already been identified that unmanned systems could undertake more readily than humans. However, for this to occur, such systems will need to be agile, versatile, persistent, reliable, survivable and lethal. This will require many of the vehicles ‘cognitive’ or higher order functions to be more fully developed, whereas to date only the ‘component’ or physical functions have been successfully automated and deployed. The book draws upon a broad range of others’ work with a view to providing a product that is greater than the sum of its parts. The discussion is intentionally approached from the perspective of improving understanding rather than providing solutions or drawing firm conclusions. Consequently, researchers reading this book with the hope of uncovering some novel theory or approach to automating an unmanned vehicle will be as disappointed as the capability planner who anticipates a catalogue of technical risks and feasibility options against his favoured list of component technologies and potential applications. Nevertheless, it is hoped that both will at least learn something of the other’s world and that progress will ensue as a result. For the defence policy and decision maker, this is a "must-read" book which brings together an important technology summary with a considered analysis of future doctrinal, legal and ethical issues in unmanned and autonomous systems. For research engineers and developers of robotics, this book provides a unique perspective on the implications and consequences of our craft; connecting what we do to the deployment and use of the technology in current and future defence systems. Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte

Download or read book Conference Record for 1992 Fifth Conference on Human Factors and Power Plants written by E. W. Hagen and published by Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers(IEEE). This book was released on 1992 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Autonomous Safety Control of Flight Vehicles written by Xiang Yu and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2021-02-12 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aerospace vehicles are by their very nature a crucial environment for safety-critical systems. By virtue of an effective safety control system, the aerospace vehicle can maintain high performance despite the risk of component malfunction and multiple disturbances, thereby enhancing aircraft safety and the probability of success for a mission. Autonomous Safety Control of Flight Vehicles presents a systematic methodology for improving the safety of aerospace vehicles in the face of the following occurrences: a loss of control effectiveness of actuators and control surface impairments; the disturbance of observer-based control against multiple disturbances; actuator faults and model uncertainties in hypersonic gliding vehicles; and faults arising from actuator faults and sensor faults. Several fundamental issues related to safety are explicitly analyzed according to aerospace engineering system characteristics; while focusing on these safety issues, the safety control design problems of aircraft are studied and elaborated on in detail using systematic design methods. The research results illustrate the superiority of the safety control approaches put forward. The expected reader group for this book includes undergraduate and graduate students but also industry practitioners and researchers. About the Authors: Xiang Yu is a Professor with the School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China. His research interests include safety control of aerospace engineering systems, guidance, navigation, and control of unmanned aerial vehicles. Lei Guo, appointed as "Chang Jiang Scholar Chair Professor", is a Professor with the School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China. His research interests include anti-disturbance control and filtering, stochastic control, and fault detection with their applications to aerospace systems. Youmin Zhang is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Québec, Canada. His research interests include fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control, and cooperative guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) of unmanned aerial/space/ground/surface vehicles. Jin Jiang is a Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada. His research interests include fault-tolerant control of safety-critical systems, advanced control of power plants containing non-traditional energy resources, and instrumentation and control for nuclear power plants.

Download or read book The Effect of Various Levels of Automation on Human Operators Performance in Man Machine Systems written by R. E. Thomas and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This report describes a method for generating definitive data on the effects of various levels of automation on human operators' performance on man-machine systems. The method incorporates a model and equipment or theoretical and experimental investigations. Equipment was designed and built in accordance with the assumptions of the automation model for studying human performance in an automated environment. Functions to be controlled are generated by a general-purpose analog computer. Pilot experiments have demonstrated that the equipment is suitable and that the model adequately describes automation problems. Significant effects of various levels of automation were demonstrated in some of the experiments."--Page iii

Download or read book Shepherding UxVs for Human Swarm Teaming written by Hussein A. Abbass and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-03-19 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book draws inspiration from natural shepherding, whereby a farmer utilizes sheepdogs to herd sheep, to inspire a scalable and inherently human friendly approach to swarm control. The book discusses advanced artificial intelligence (AI) approaches needed to design smart robotic shepherding agents capable of controlling biological swarms or robotic swarms of unmanned vehicles. These smart shepherding agents are described with the techniques applicable to the control of Unmanned X Vehicles (UxVs) including air (unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs), ground (unmanned ground vehicles or UGVs), underwater (unmanned underwater vehicles or UUVs), and on the surface of water (unmanned surface vehicles or USVs). This book proposes how smart ‘shepherds’ could be designed and used to guide a swarm of UxVs to achieve a goal while ameliorating typical communication bandwidth issues that arise in the control of multi agent systems. The book covers a wide range of topics ranging from the design of deep reinforcement learning models for shepherding a swarm, transparency in swarm guidance, and ontology-guided learning, to the design of smart swarm guidance methods for shepherding with UGVs and UAVs. The book extends the discussion to human-swarm teaming by looking into the real-time analysis of human data during human-swarm interaction, the concept of trust for human-swarm teaming, and the design of activity recognition systems for shepherding. Presents a comprehensive look at human-swarm teaming; Tackles artificial intelligence techniques for swarm guidance; Provides artificial intelligence techniques for real-time human performance analysis.

Download or read book Control of Autonomous Aerial Vehicles written by Andrea L'Afflitto and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-11-20 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Control of Autonomous Aerial Vehicles is an edited book that provides a single-volume snapshot on the state of the art in the field of control theory applied to the design of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aka “drones”, employed in a variety of applications. The homogeneous structure allows the reader to transition seamlessly through results in guidance, navigation, and control of UAVs, according to the canonical classification of the main components of a UAV’s autopilot. Each chapter has been written to assist graduate students and practitioners in the fields of aerospace engineering and control theory. The contributing authors duly present detailed literature reviews, conveying their arguments in a systematic way with the help of diagrams, plots, and algorithms. They showcase the applicability of their results by means of flight tests and numerical simulations, the results of which are discussed in detail. Control of Autonomous Aerial Vehicles will interest readers who are researchers, practitioners or graduate students in control theory, autonomous systems or robotics, or in aerospace, mechanical or electrical engineering.

Download or read book Analyzing the Effects of Dynamic Task Allocation on Human automation System Performance written by Aaron William Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modem complex aerospace systems employ flight deck automation to increase the efficiency and safety of systems while reducing operator workload. However, too much automation can lead to overtrust, complacency, and a decrease in operator situation awareness. In an attempt to prevent these from occurring, the operator and the automation often share responsibility for performing tasks. The tasks allocated to each agent are rarely fixed; instead, they can be dynamically re-allocated throughout operations based on the state of the operators, system, and environment. This thesis investigates how dynamic task re-allocation has been implemented in operational aerospace systems, and investigates the effect of control mode transitions on operator flying performance, visual attention, mental workload, and situation awareness through experimentation and simulation. This thesis reviews the dynamic task allocation literature and discusses the ways in which the concept can be implemented. It highlights adaptive automation, in which the dynamic re-allocation of tasks is initiated by the automation in a manner that is adaptive - in response to the state of the operator, system, and environment - and workload-balancing - with the purpose of keeping the operator in control as much as possible while remaining at a moderate level of mental workload. Adaptive automation is enthusiastically supported in the literature; however, for reasons discussed, it has not been deployed in any operational civilian aerospace system. In the experiment, twelve subjects sat at a fixed-base lunar landing simulator and initiated transitions between automatic and two manual control modes. Visual fixations were recorded with an eye tracker, and subjects' mental workload and situation awareness were measured using the responses to a secondary two-choice response task and a tertiary task of verbal call-outs of the vehicle state, respectively. Subjects were found to re-allocate attention according to the priority of tasks: during mode transitions from autopilot to two-axis manual control the percent of total attention on the attitude indicator (which was required for the primary flying task) increased 14% while attention on instruments required for the secondary and tertiary tasks decreased 5%. Subjects' conception of task priority appeared to be influenced by instructions given during training and top-down and bottom-up properties of the tasks and instrument displays. The attention allocation was also affected by the frequency of control inputs required. The percent of attention on the attitude indicator decreased up to 13% across mode transitions where the flying task was not re-allocated because the pitch guidance rate-of-change decreased from -9 to 0 °/s throughout the trial. Consequently, fewer control inputs and less attention were necessary later in the trial. An integrated human-vehicle model was developed to simulate how operators allocate attention in the lunar landing task and the effect this has on flying performance, mental workload, and situation awareness. The human performance model describes how operators make estimates of the system states, correct these estimates by attending and perceiving information from the displays, and use these estimates to control the vehicle. A new attention parameter - the uncertainty in operators' estimates of system states between visual fixations - was developed that directly relates attention and situation awareness. The model's attention block was validated against experimental data, demonstrating an average difference in the percent of attention