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THE EFFECT OF CONFIGURAL DISPLAYS ON PILOT SITUATION AWARENESS IN HELMET-MOUNTED DISPLAYS

Jenkins, Joseph C.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1187882021

Abstract Details

2007, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, Engineering PhD.
Jenkins, Joseph Christopher, Ph.D., Engineering, Wright State University, 2007. The Effect of Configural Displays on Pilot Situation Awareness in Helmet-Mounted Displays. The current research utilized configural displays within the domain of aviation to assess what design features of configural displays contribute to the formation of operator situation awareness (SA). Configural displays map system information relevant to operator goals onto geometric shapes called emergent features. An emergent feature is formed from the combination of individual line segments to produce a global feature more perceptually salient and recognized sooner than the individual parts themselves. Configural displays have been shown in previous research to provide better operator performance for integration tasks where multiple pieces of information must be considered at once, yet the design aspects of configural displays that impact the formation of operator SA have yet to be determined. The current research compared the design features of three aviation configural displays over four experiments to quantify what aspects of configural displays would impact operator SA. The research sought to determine whether the simple act of representing system information in configural displays using emergent features is sufficient for facilitating operator SA or do other design factors need to be considered? Operator SA was assessed using explicit and implicit measures of SA from operator task performance in addition to a subjective SA rating scale. The recognition of aircraft attitude (climb/dive flight angles) when briefly presented to pilots in Experiment 1 revealed significant performance differences for the Arc Segment Attitude Reference (ASAR) configural display which mapped aircraft attitude information onto a circular shape versus the traditional aircraft head-up display (HUD) ladder found in the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) HUD and Dual-Articulated (DA) HUD. The current research in Experiment 1 provides evidence that configural displays such as the ASAR that utilize emergent features well mapped to fully relate the information needed for a task will facilitate pilot Level 1 SA (i.e., perception of information) for integration tasks. The performance results for the dynamic aircraft control task in Experiment 2 were inconclusive as performance differences between the three configural displays approached significance, but did not reach significance. Experiment 2 investigated design differences of configural displays impacting operator SA beyond perception, that is, once information extraction has taken place, how does the pilot utilize the information to build and develop Level 2 and Level 3 SA? Given the brief duration of the task from Experiment 2, it’s recommended that the benefits of configural displays for higher-order SA be investigated in a more complex and extended task that would allow SA to be developed over time and possibly sampled more extensively than the task used in Experiment 2 that lasted from 1-2 seconds for the performance measures used. Experiments 3 and 4 compared operator SA for using the same three configural displays as used in Experiments 1 and 2 but for switching between attitude displays during task completion. The findings from Experiment 3 show that when using a configural display off-axis in a helmet-mounted display (HMD) that allows for aircraft attitude to be readily perceived and understood (i.e., the prevailing format from Experiment 1), the transition forward to the primary flight display (i.e., forward configural display) poses little impact on either pilot (expert) or flight test engineer (FTE, novice) ability to transition between the two displays and still control the aircraft. The results from Experiment 4 showed that experts and novices both choose to rely upon aircraft instruments for obtaining orientation cues and aircraft attitude state when using a HMD off-axis, but how expert and novice aircraft operators utilize flight instruments and real world visual cues off-axis in a HMD during extending off-axis viewing still needs to be examined. An application of the design recommendations for configural displays thought to benefit SA formation for operators is provided as a basis for how to design configural displays to provide for all three levels of SA. The results from the current research support the converging evidence that the critical distinction in providing system information to operators with configural displays lies in the degree to which the mapping of system information onto emergent features corresponds to operator goals, and extends existing configural display research by providing insight into the configural display design features that impact operator SA formation when using a single configural display, and for the first time, the transitioning from one configural display to another during completion of an integration task. The current research also contributed to the theory of SA by examining the use of configural displays to provide a design approach to assist operators in developing and maintaining SA. The theory of SA provides a framework for what must take place for SA to be established and developed (i.e., information should be highly salient and related to operator goals), but SA theory does not provide a specific means by which this can be achieved. For the current research, configural displays were provided as a means for providing a design approach that would inherently provide for information saliency (i.e., emergent features), comprehension of task goals (display mapped to system information relevant to task), and the ability to predict system states when emergent features changed over time to express emerging critical conditions in the system.
Jennie Gallimore (Advisor)
253 p.
Configural displays; Situation Awareness; Emergent features; Helmet-Mounted Displays; Attitude Awareness; Off-axis Symbology

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Jenkins, J. C. (2007). THE EFFECT OF CONFIGURAL DISPLAYS ON PILOT SITUATION AWARENESS IN HELMET-MOUNTED DISPLAYS [Doctoral dissertation, Wright State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1187882021

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Jenkins, Joseph. THE EFFECT OF CONFIGURAL DISPLAYS ON PILOT SITUATION AWARENESS IN HELMET-MOUNTED DISPLAYS. 2007. Wright State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1187882021.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Jenkins, Joseph. "THE EFFECT OF CONFIGURAL DISPLAYS ON PILOT SITUATION AWARENESS IN HELMET-MOUNTED DISPLAYS." Doctoral dissertation, Wright State University, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1187882021

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2007, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Wright State University and OhioLINK.