USAARL Human-Focused Research Aims to Enhance UAS Effectiveness, Readiness
FORT DETRICK, Md. — As the capabilities of unmanned aerial systems continue to evolve rapidly in response to the tactical and strategic necessities of the modern battlefield, the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory is exploring a unique approach to improving their operational effectiveness – by focusing on the protection and performance of UAS operators.
"USAARL is putting the 'human' in human-machine teaming," says Dr. Bethany Ranes, a sensory scientist with USAARL's Warfighter Performance Group. "It's easy to overlook the fact that while the vehicle itself may be unmanned, it will always be operated by a human. And because human operators are an integral part of human-machine teaming, it's essential that we maximize that relationship."
UAS has transformed the modern battlefield, providing capabilities ranging from reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition to precision strikes. Even their mere presence can have a significant deterrent effect on the battlefield. These capabilities have been made possible through advances in data analytics, sensor technologies, propulsion systems, and autonomous navigation. Unmanned aircraft can reduce the risk of Warfighter injury and death, improve real-time surveillance capability, typically cost less than comparable manned aircraft, and can be adapted to meet rapidly changing mission requirements.
However, progress in human-machine integration has not always kept pace with the rapid developments of UAS technologies. To close that gap, Ranes' team is actively conducting research in several key areas including the use of adaptive automation to assist in workload management, improved understanding of operator health and performance, updated training and testing protocols, and the legal, ethical, and policy considerations related to the use of UAS in MEDEVAC scenarios.
One of the biggest concerns in UAS operations is the tendency for operators to become overly reliant on automation. USAARL researchers believe this issue, which they call the out-of-the-loop problem, can have significant health impacts in addition to operational ones.
"If you're out of the loop, you can't react very well when something happens suddenly, so it can be very dangerous," says Ranes. "On top of that, when you're spending hours and hours doing something that's disengaging and boring, it's terrible for brain health. It leaves you more vulnerable to trauma effects and attention deficit issues."
Ranes, a cognitive neuroscientist who focused on developing techniques for improving engagement with human-machine interfaces before joining USAARL, sees the increasing investment in UAS as an opportunity for the laboratory to conduct innovative, world-leading aeromedical research.
"What I think is most exciting about UAS is that it is a really new frontier for understanding human cognition," says Ranes. "It's an opportunity for us to ask what we can do to optimize the aspects of the vehicle and retain the optimal function of humans. Because no matter what, at the end of the day technology is still light years behind what a human brain can do."
Along with USAARL Commander Col. Matthew Hoefer, Ranes recently spoke to representatives of the Army's UAS community and systems developers about the laboratory's efforts to close gaps in human-machine interfaces, scalable autonomy, and autonomous MEDEVAC during the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Summit at Fort Novosel in February. The four-day summit, hosted by the U.S. Army Aviation Capability Development Integration Directorate, was one of a series of meetings designed to ensure the Army's UAS modernization effort stays in tune with current battlefield experience and Army requirements.
"It's a lot easier to measure the performance of a machine than the performance of a human being," explained Hoefer during the summit. "If we can use physiological monitoring to measure human performance while we're also measuring the performance of the machine, then we can tie those two together and create a symbiosis. And then you will have a sliding scale of workload management where, if the human is overwhelmed, the machine can take over, and if the human is able to do more complicated tasks, the machine can draw down. And if you lose the human due to impairment, adaptive autonomy enables the machine to take over and continue the mission."
At the next summit, scheduled for August, USAARL plans to demonstrate its recent efforts to team multisensory research with future UAS control systems to increase operator performance.
"When we're talking about UAS, we're really getting into the realm of science fiction," says Ranes. "Humans don't have the evolutionary experience to intuitively know how to fly, but we have taught ourselves how. Moving as rapidly as we are, to be successful we're going to have to really think about the most human way to operate UAS."