When Plans Change: Task Analysis and Taxonomy of 3-D Situation Awareness Challenges of UAV Replanning

Abstract

There are a host of human factors issues involved in operating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The challenges facing UAV operators are intensified when dynamic mission environments require route replanning on-the-fly, under time pressure. The focus of this work is to characterize the specific 3-D spatial awareness challenges encountered during UAV replanning, in order to design display and automation interventions and assistance to support replanning. To elucidate these 3-D difficulties, we conducted a cognitive task analysis of the replanning problem with the Navy's VC-6 Squadron recently returned from Iraq. Key 3-D spatial challenges involved rationalizing complex combinations of avoiding airspace and terrain regions while simultaneously staying inside or near other airspace, target, and ground regions. Conventional UAV ground control displays did not support the integration or understanding of spatial aspects of the complex information necessary for UAV replanning. Replanning events were operationalized in terms of their 3-D spatial attributes and display requirements, and organized into a taxonomy pairing the events to replanning display interventions. A synthetic task abstraction of the key 3-D spatial replanning challenges was created, and experimentally validated. The display-to-event taxonomy guides future display designs, and experiment data and conventional displays serve as a baseline for future replanning displays.

Guided Attention For Autonomous System Supervision

“…To enable participants to perform unmanned systems supervisory tasks, we developed a synthetic task environment that abstracted the core features of supervision tasks, path planning automation, and operational environments. This was informed by recent task analyses with Navy UAV operators (Cook & Smallman, 2010) and recent documents outlining the role for the future unmanned systems supervisor (DoD, 2011).…”

Situation Displays for Dynamic UAV Replanning: Intuitions and Performance for Display Formats

“…Stimuli. In the experiment, we used a synthetic replanning task designed to represent the key 3D spatial replanning challenges faced by UAV Navy operators (Cook et al, 2009), informed by our task analysis (Cook & Smallman, 2010). Participants replanned routes that became compromised by closed airspace and relocated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) targets, and the replanning objective was to satisfy four goal elements: (1) get within distance range and line-of-sight of two ISR targets, (2) avoid three closed airspace cubes, (3) avoid terrain on a 5-level elevation map, and (4) complete the replan quickly before the UAV reached the compromised part of the route.…”

“…As initial steps in researching solutions, we recently conducted a task analysis of the 3D spatial awareness requirements of UAV replanning (Cook & Smallman, 2010). We brought the abstracted UAV replanning requirements into the lab, and measured 3D spatial aspects of replanning with present-day GCS displays.…”

Comparison of 3D Versus 4D Path Planning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

“…We defined cloud criteria and implemented cruise level rule, air classes, mobile targets, and approach angle in addition to the criteria used commonly in earlier studies. Moreover, the target is mobile to make the model more realistic.In addition to the studies presented in Table 1, there are also cognitive-based studies 4,[66][67][68][69][70][71][72] that aim to manage challenges between human and command and control (C2) systems in UAV domain. Several researchers highlighted human factors on C2 systems to increase the effectiveness of UAV operations.…”

“…Several researchers highlighted human factors on C2 systems to increase the effectiveness of UAV operations. Focusing on dynamic UAV route re-planning during missions [67][68][69] , allocating air space 66,70 , and 3D space perception [71][72] are some of the research areas in human controlled UAVs. …”