Incorporating Operator Situation Awareness into the Design Process: A Key Ingredient for Future Combat Unmanned Rotorcraft

The military is relying more and more on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to increase the situation awareness of soldiers and improve their margin of safety in combat environments. The success of these vehicles is dependent upon operators who maintain the situation awareness necessary for top performance, even in adverse conditions. UAV operation in combat is fast-paced and involves a great deal of coordination. The scientific process employed in the user-centered design and usability testing of the warfighter-machine interface for the U.S. Army’s future unmanned rotorcraft is the focus of this paper. The challenges imposed by combat strategies that are still on the drawing board and technology that does not yet exist are addressed. The process described in this paper has been successfully applied to the design and development of many human-machine interfaces, e.g., airways facilities maintenance control centers (Endsley & Kiris, 1994), medical systems (Endsley, 2000), and brigade command and control (Endsley, Bolstad, Jones, & Riley, 2003). This methodology can benefit other user-interface designers to insure the operator will have situation awareness, even in very complex, demanding, operating environments.