Coherent Design of Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Operations and Control Stations

Designing for UAV systems presents novel challenges, both in terms of selecting and presenting adequate information for effective teleoperation, and in creating operational procedures and ground control station interfaces that are robust to a range of UAV platforms and missions. We propose that a vital design objective is establishing coherence between these three features (function, procedures, and ground control station interfaces). Specifically, principles of coherent design are applied to the design of operational procedures and ground control stations (GCS) for uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs). Creating a coherent set of operating procedures, automatic functions and operators requires a systematic design approach that considers the system and the mission at different levels of abstraction and integrates the different elements of the system. Following this approach, Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) was used to develop procedures and ground control stations for continuous target surveillance using a UAV. The importance of the coherence provided by the selected design method of UAV operational procedures and ground control stations was subsequently analyzed through human-in-the-loop simulation. The results indicate that UAV controllers, using coherently designed elements, achieve significantly higher mission performance and experience lower workloads than those using incoherently matched elements.