Citation

Schulte A. Cogn. Technol. Work 2002; 4(3): 146-159.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s101110200014

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper describes an approach to cognitive and cooperative operator assistance in the field of tactical flight mission management. A framework for a generic functional concept is derived from general considerations of human performance and cognitive engineering. A system built according to these human-centred design principles will be able to keep up with the change of situation parameters, in order to provide situational adapted operator assistance. Such a cognitive assistant system represents an approach to ensure the highest degree possible of situation awareness of the flight deck crew as well as a satisfactory workload level. This generic approach to mission management and crew assistance for military aircraft has been realised in different application domains such as military transport and air-to-ground attack. The Crew Assistant Military Aircraft is a functional prototype for the air transport application. Even applications in the domain of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAV) are in reach. This paper mainly covers one state-of-the-art research and development activity in the domain of combat aircraft: the TMM - Tactical Mission Management System is an experimental solution for the air-to-ground attack role. The TMM has been implemented as a functional prototype in the mission avionics experimental cockpit (MAXC), a development flight simulator at ESG and evaluated with German Air Force pilots as subjects in simulator trials. Therefore, the TMM has been compared with a reference cockpit avionics configuration in terms of task performance, workload, situation awareness and operator acceptance. After giving an overview of the system concepts this paper reports on the experimental design and results of the simulator trial campaign.

Language: en