November 8, 2007:
Cockpit
designers (who have been around for over half a century) and video game
designers (who have been around for several decades) are combining their
talents to create better "work stations" for those who operate UAVs (unmanned
aerial vehicles). There are basically two kinds of UAV "cockpits." One is
indoors, for the larger (several hundred pounds and up) UAVs. These work
stations basically do a lot with a PC keyboard, a joystick and several
(sometimes half a dozen) flat screen displays. These last items have basically
pushed the heavier, bulkier and more expensive CRTs out of the PC market. The
military loves them, because they take up less space, are lighter (and thus
easier to move) and consume less power (important when you are using a
generator for juice.)
These larger UAVs usually
have multiple cameras on board, and the trend is to have more. So you can have
one display showing the ground below, and another showing one or more
"navigational" (the view from the front or side of the aircraft" views.) Your
typical 22 inch (diagonal) flat screen display provides a viewing area of 11x19
inches. You can easily have six of these in front of you. There are mounts for
this arrangement, sold mainly to financial institutions (where traders need to
monitor a lot of information). For the UAV pilot, there is also the need for a
display showing a map, and the UAVs position on it, and another showing UAV
status. There is more and more data becoming available. For example, there is a
feed with the location of friendly units in the area, and feeds from other
UAVs, aircraft, helicopters or even troops on the ground. The military calls
combining all this "fusion," while civilians witness it as a "mash up" when
they combine Google Earth vids with other web data.
For larger UAVs, there is
usually a second member of the crew, who just monitors another bunch of
displays that show only data from the camera pointing down. But the sensor
operator is catching a live feed, and this increasingly requires additional
displays to view earlier activity. Or two different types of vidcam may be used
(photo and heat sensing, for example.) It's also becoming more common for the
video feed of the ground to be sent off to local ground units for immediate
use. The intel personnel at the ground unit headquarters are getting their own
specially designed display array.
What the cockpit designer
and video game guys do is use their experience with what people need to see,
and how they see it, to place the right information on the right display at the
right time. The video game designers are actually taking the lead here, because
video games are closer to the actual environment a UAV "pilot" works in, than
is someone in a fighter aircraft cockpit. But for the UAV controller, things
work better if what's in front of you is laid out to give you what you need
when you need it.
The smaller (micro, or
under ten pound) UAVs are used by "pilots" who are outside. The simple
expedient here was to give the UAV pilot a device that looks a lot like a game
controller. Except it has a small color flat screen built in. Kids have been
using controllers like to fly simulated aircraft on TV sets for over a decade.
Works as well on the battlefield for micro-UAVs.
For the small (hundred
pounds or less) UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles), "hands off" control systems
are being developed. These allow voice commands to control the robots. Other
solutions in the works are a small wireless keypad that would be attached to a soldiers
rifle, enabling him to control the droid, while still being able to use his
weapon. Another option uses a special electronic glove that allows the robot to
be controlled with hand signals.