ABSTRACT
In order to successfully supervise unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), while coordinating with other air and ground assets, operators will require significant training, a supportive interface and a high degree of situational awareness (SA). Even with these elements, task saturation and individual cognitive limitations can drive an operator into a state of mental overload, resulting in degraded performance and even mission failure. Real-time adaptive aiding (also adaptive automation) can assist the operator in multiple ways during critical periods throughout the mission. It can also enhance the performance capability of the operators and result in one operator doing the work of many. However, the adaptive automation and decision support tools must be appropriately applied in order to be more helpful than disruptive. The aiding must be reliable, predictable, timely, relevant, and seamlessly introduced and removed. Additionally, predetermined contracts with the adaptive automation can address user-specific, mission-specific and context-specific needs. This paper provides a test perspective from the operator's point of view to workload issues involved in supervising highly-autonomous air vehicles and some of the adaptive aiding strategies that could be used to help manage them. The role of Operator Functional State (OFS) assessment using psychophysiological measures will also be discussed.
