Visual Support in Operating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

Most important source of information for operators of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in controlling airframe and camera are the outside world images from the on-board camera. However, these images are of degraded quality, i.e. limited field of view, limited spatial resolution, and low update rate, which leads to poor operator performance and loss of situational awareness.An important operator task is controlling the camera, which requires information on airframe heading and speed, and camera heading and pitch. This information may be displayed by digital or pictorial indicators. The TNO Human Factors Research Institute developed a new principle of presentation: a view on a Computer Generated Environment (CGE). This view is directly coupled to the actual position and orientation of the camera, and may be depicted with arbitrary field of view, zoom-factor, and update rate. For example zoomed-out around a zoomed-in camera image to improve situational awareness, or with high update rates superposed over a slow updated camera image to improve tracking performance.The CGE (for example a grid positioned at sea-level) provides a caricature of the optic array that is equivalent to the optic array that would have been observed on-board the airframe. We call this ecologically compatible. This is fundamentally different from a presentation by indicators which are per definition an abstraction of reality, and require transformations to create a sense of camera and airframe state. An ecological compatible display allows the use of elementary information processing mechanisms normally used for processing information on layout of the environment. Obviously, utilizing such mechanisms will result in better performance and reduced workload compared with the traditional methods of operator support. This claim is confirmed by experiments on tracking, search, and steering tasks.Command and control as well as air traffic control systems users may benefit from three-dimensional (3D) presentation of data, although the results of human performance studies comparing different 3D rendering display technologies (e.g., 3D perspective & stereoscopic) have been equivocal. The 3D Volumetric Display (3DVD), an evolving

Advanced Interface for Tactical Security (AITS) Problem Analysis and Concept Definition.

“…Because ROVs represent another class of sensor platform, and will be increasingly relied upon for surveillance in future tactical missions (Van Erp, Kappe, and Korteling, 1996), displays of ROV imagery should also be considered for advanced interface design. There is currently great variability in ROV sensors regarding field-of-view, image scaling, orientation and perspective, which complicates the design of appropriate displays.…”