ACTIVE MAN-MACHINE INTERFACE FOR ADVANCED ROTORCRAFT

Under the joint sponsorship of Army ATCOM and NASA/Ames Research Center, CHI Systems is developing an innovative approach to building an intelligent, active man-machine interface or AMMI for advanced military and commercial rotorcraft Caution/Waming/Advisory (CWA) systems. The approach is based on two proprietary design methodologies - COGNET (COGnition as a NEtwork of Tasks) and BATON (Blackboard Architecture for Task Oriented Networks). COGNET has been developed to model the cognitive/decision processes of tactical operators in real-time, multi-tasking environments, and BATON is a set of software tools which is used to implement a COGNET model. Together, COGNET and BATON are used to build a powerful computational model of the operator and embed this model in the MMI software, thereby providing an essential ingredient for intelligent CWA support. The AMMI will prune and prioritize the CWA messages and only tell the pilot what the pilot needs to know at any given point in the mission. During the just-completed initial phase of the project, a framework for AMMI was constructed, an appropriate set of functions for AMMI was identified, and it was determined that COGNET could effectively model the cognitive processes and roles of human operators in advanced rotorcraft systems. Finally, a detailed architecture and development plan was constructed. In the second phase of the project, the AMMI development plan will be executed within an advanced rotorcraft flight simulation facility at NASA Ames, and targeted toward eventual implementation in the UH-60 Blackhawk as part of the Core Avionics upgrade.