The development of an intelligent tutoring system for helicopter flight training is described. The Intelligent Flight Trainer (IFT) is a simulator-based system designed to assist students in developing proficiency on a suite of initial entry rotary wing maneuvers. It encapsulates instructor pilot domain knowledge in an expert system shell that provides tutorial and performance monitoring functions through a synthetic voice generator. The expert system shell works in concert with a variable stability augmentation control law that makes it easier for a neophyte student to control the motion of the simulated vehicle. Experimental verification of the IFT is currently under way at the UH-1 Training Research Simulator at Fort Rucker.

We describe a Visualization and Interactive Elicitation Workstation (VIEW) prototype, developed to support knowledge elicitation (KE) and mental model research and designed to meet five key objectives: 1) capturing both explicit and implicit knowledge; 2) providing perceptually-rich elicitation stimuli; 3) minimizing KE-imposed distortions; 4) supporting a variety of techniques to capture the range of Structures comprising the expert's mental model; and 5) capturing the expert's movement within and among these structures. These considerations led to a design which combines an inteructive KE module supporting direct, indirect, and observational KE techniques, with a visuulizution module providing a variety of graphical displays (e.g., maps and overlays, decision trees, bar graphs, etc.) and supporting a hyper linkbased navigation among them. VIEW supports observational KE by tracking the expert's use of the daerent displays during decision-making. VIEW supports direct and indirect KE by providing an interactive datacollection and analysis environment and using the graphical displays as the elicitation stimuli. The complete VIEW design supports repertory grid analysis, proximity scaling techniques, and a variety of direct techniques. Depending on the technique used, different characteristics of the display-stimuli are elicited (e.g., similarities or differences among displays, etc.). From these data the structure and content of the expert's mental models can be inferred. The VIEW workstation thus provides a mental model visualization and elicitation environment which can be used to investigate a variety of phenomena, including novicdexpert and individual differences, development and degradation of expertise over time, and the impact of different types of training. A Windows95-based VIEW prototype was developed for Army battlefield management, but the principles extend to any domain where effective decision-making depends on the integration of diverse data and knowledge sources to maintain a complex and flexible mental model in a dynamic environment.The human is the most important part of any system, yet we still have the least amount of objective, real-time information on the status of this critical element.We are currently developing a simple, non-invasive, rugged monitor for performance-capacity tracking, prediction, and management. The hardware for this system is based on a patented activitymonitoring apparatus with configurable filters. This monitor looks like a wristwatch and requires no electrical or optical connections with the individual. An algorithm resident in this "actigraph" will extract a sleep and wakefulness time series from motor activity, while another will process these data according to a sleep and performance model (SPM) that calculates and displays the individual's predicted cognitive effectiveness along with sleep-history data. Stand-alone SPM versions have also been developed and will be used as PC-based decision aids, alone and in conjunction with the SPM monitor.Data on Phase I actigraph h...

Independent Modal Space Control (IMSC) is an established technique in active suppression of vibrations, in which the control law is developed exclusively in the modal space, allowing for independent design of the modal control forces. These forces can be transformed to the physical domain through modal transformation. The resulting controller is fixed-gain, with the active damping introduced to the system determined independently for each mode and is a function of the velocity for the under-damped case. In this work we propose to modify IMSC using fuzzy reasoning. The result is a new non-linear control law, embedding fuzzy reasoning and an implicit fuzzy rule-base that transforms the traditional algorithm from a fixed-gain to a variable-gain controller. The algorithm uses information about the displacement profile across the sensed locations to distribute the active damping rationally among the modal controllers. This new algorithm complements the “local” view of the traditional algorithm in the modal space, with a “global” view of the displacements in the physical space. The results show significant improvement in the settling time as the performance criterion.

Independent Modal space Control (IMSC) is a well established method in active control of vibration. In this method, the control law is developed exclusively in the modal space, allowing for independent design of modal control forces. These forces are then transformed to the physical space by modal transformation. The resulting controller is fixed-gain, with the active damping introduced to the system determined independently for each mode. This damping is directly proportional to the modal velocity in the under-damped case. In this work, we propose to modify IMSC using kinetic energy distribution in the modal space, and fuzzy reasoning. The result is a new non-linear control law, embedding fuzzy reasoning and an implicit fuzzy rule-base that transforms the standard algorithm from a fixed-gain, to a variable-gain controller. A variant of the new algorithm uses information about the velocity profile across the sensed locations to distribute the active damping rationally among the modal controllers. This new algorithm complements the local view of the traditional algorithm in the modal space, with a global view of the velocities in the physical space. The results show significant improvement in the settling time as the performance criterion.