AFRL's Advanced Visualization Displays Enable Superior Operator Performance

  • Published
  • By Human Effectiveness Directorate
  • AFRL/HE
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  With the aid of Air Mobility Command's Tanker Airlift Control Center personnel, Air Force Research Laboratory researchers demonstrated and evaluated advanced visualization displays depicting global airlift missions and their associated resources. The researchers developed Spiral 1 of the timeline tool concept, which leverages AFRL's Work-Centered Interface Distributed Environment capability, as the first of a three-phase technology effort focused on demonstrating emergent Work-Centered Support System-based cognitive analysis and user interface design approaches.

Operationally, the enhanced mission visualization capability will reduce cycle time and increase strategic effectiveness without the cognitive burden currently associated with this work. These improved visualizations enable mission execution personnel to focus on problem solving, decision making, and collaboration, increasing the chances of mission success. The improvements not only translate to less effort expended on system training and usage (including the tasks of locating, retrieving, mentally fusing, and distributing information), but also promote an operator's synchronization with other team members in a dynamic, rapidly changing operational environment.

AFRL researchers observed and interviewed TACC personnel, including directors of operation, controllers, and mission planners, to better understand the cognitive work involved with supporting global missions. The WIDE timeline tool visually maps a view of the mission (and related resource constraints) to a common time scale reflecting real-time AMC mission data. This dynamic aspect of the visualization capability helps mission execution personnel readily understand the context of problems to which they are alerted, since they can literally "see" both the factors affecting mission viability and the possible solutions. The timeline tool will also facilitate what-if simulations, promoting better situation awareness of repercussions resulting from any changes to the mission itinerary.

AFRL successfully evaluated the WIDE timeline display with the assistance of various TACC mission execution personnel. They compared personnel performance in realistic work scenarios using the timeline concept and AMC's existing system. With the timeline, operators were able to replan missions significantly faster, with fewer errors and a decreased cognitive workload. They also attained greater situation awareness of repercussions stemming from mission changes. AMC plans to bring these new capabilities to TACC personnel.