ABSTRACT
There are various possibilities that may help to overcome the inherent human factors problems in remote control situations that result in degraded situation awareness. The present paper presents two studies focusing on relatively simple image augmentation solutions. In these studies, camera operators of a simulated unmanned air vehicle, could be supported by synthetic image augmentation, i.e. an earth-fixed computer generated grid (CGG) in the camera-image of the outside world. The motions and transformations of such a CGG specify directly and unambiguously the various components of platform- as well as camera motion (translations and rotations). The CGG provides a caricature of the optic array that is equivalent to the optic array that would have been observed on-board the platform. This is fundamentally different from a presentation by conventional displays and indicators which are per definition an abstraction of reality, and require mental transformations to create a sense of camera and airframe attitude. The CGG applies to what we call the principle of ecological compatibility (Van Erp, Kappé & Korteling, 1996a).
