Defense Intelligence Reference Document Cognitive Limits On Simultaneous Control Of Multiple Unmanned Spacecraft

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Chapter 4: Studies in Command of Multiple Semi-
Automated Vehicles
Another analogue to remotely commanding several spacecraft is piloting or supervising
operation of several unmanned ground or air vehicles (UGVs and UAVs). The primary
use of these scenarios is in military operations which imposed additional criteria on the
control system. Examples of several UAVs and their primary missions are shown in
Figure 6. Control of vehicles can be either in-theater, at a range of yards to l0's of
miles, or from a long-range command and control center, such as the Predator
reconnaissance in the Iraq or Afghan Theater executed from bases within the
continental United States.
In addition to single vehicle control systems, UAV swarms are being developed. In this
scenario a remote pilot executes a command to the swarm which communicates
amongst itself to establish, for example, an RF emitter target location. 44 In this type of
a control system the raw number of vehicles under one pilot's control can dramatically
increase, but the number of swarms then takes the place of the number of vehicles in
developing big picture cognitive limits. Such systems are also under development for
space exploration. 45
In 2005, the US Army was operating two tactical surveillance UAVs: the Hunter and its
newer replacement, the Shadow. Each UAV requires a team of two operators. Dixon
studied the workload of Hunter/Shadow operators and with the help of SMEs designed a
simulation to determine if augmentation systems could increase the number of aircraft
controlled per pilot from one-half to two. Pilots were responsible for mission completion
(reconnaissance of a command target area), locating targets of opportunity (TOO), and
on-board system monitoring. There were three levels of pilot aircraft control: baseline,
autoalert, and autopilot. In the first two conditions, operators controlled the flight of the
aircraft using a joystick to indicate direction; altitude and airspeed were help constant,
while a computer controlled the remaining flight parameters (pitch, bank, etc.).
Occasionally pilots needed to compensate for wind changes. In the autopilot condition,
operators entered the final coordinates of the next command target and the aircraft
proceeded in a straight line, compensating automatically for wind changes.
Pilots flew 10 straight flight legs. At the beginning of each leg, the command target was
identified and instructions on what to locate were given. If the pilot forgot the
instructions, they could hit a "repeat" button. At the end of each leg, high-workload
tasks of loitering and zoom/pan the onboard camera to visualize the entire command
target were executed. Along each leg between command targets, pilots were instructed
to search for TOOs. Primary task completion included locating all relevant information
about the command target. Secondary task completion included TOO identification and
monitoring for an on-board system failure. The autoalert condition detected system
failures and produced an audio alert when the command target was reached.
Results showed that the autoalert augmentation dramatically decreased the time to
locate system failures, as well as significantly decreasing the number of requested
instruction repeats. Also, the autopilot augmentation dramatically decreased both
flightpath deviation and the requested number of repeats, and also dramatically
increased the number of TDO detections. Results were similar for the single and dual
aircraft scenarios, though some performance, notably TOO detection (92% to 79%), did
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