Harry K. Pedersen

From battle plans to football plays: Extending military team cognition to football

Abstract One area of focus for the sport sciences is on the improvement of team process and performance. The analogies and similarities between military command‐andcontrol and American football serve as a useful bridge in which human factors, military, and industrial/organizational psychologist can share their findings in team process and performance with the sports sciences. The Cognitive Engineering on Team Tasks Laboratory (CERTT) has approached this problem with the development of a synthetic test‐bed replicating unmanned aerial vehicle command‐and‐control coordination in the lab. Results from the lab in the areas of performance, process, holistic vs. aggregative methods, training, and communication and skill retention are used to suggest future directions in improving team performance in football

20. Acquiring Team-Level Command and Control Skill for UAV Operation

The heart of the CERTT Laboratory, shown in Fig. 1, is a flexible Synthetic Task Environment (STE) that is designed to study many different synthetic tasks for teams working in complex environments. STEs provide an ideal environment for the study of team cognition in complex settings by providing a middle-ground between the highly artificial tasks commonly found in laboratories and the often uncontrollable conditions found in the field or high fidelity simulations.

Knowledge training versus process training: The effects of training protocol on team coordination and performance

Three-person teams controlling a simulated unmanned aerial vehicle underwent different training regimes in order to assess the effect of process-based and knowledge-based training on team coordination and performance. Coordination and performance were assessed during training and eight to eleven weeks after training. Process training consisted of either enforcing a rigid coordination process or forcing teams to coordinate in different ways through the introduction of perturbations. Knowledge training consisted of cross-training teams on each others roles. Results indicate that process training had a significant effect on team coordination. In addition, the qualitative nature of coordination flexibility changed from training to retention for process versus knowledge trained teams, with process teams behaving flexibly at retention. Perturbation process training led to significantly higher team performance under high workload. Rigid process training lead to significantly lower performance in one of the retention missions.

Changes in team composition after a break: Building adapative command-and-control teams

An experiment exploring the effects of team composition on the acquisition and retention of team performance and cognitive skill is reported. Team performance was measured in the context of photographing ground targets in an unmanned aerial vehicle synthetic task environment. Team process was taken as a measure of team cognition. Experimental results include the findings that team mixing and longer retention intervals have a short lived deleterious effect on team performance immediately after the interval, while team mixing has a positive effect on team process after the interval. These findings suggest that changes in team composition and retention interval can lead to improvements in team cognition if a brief decrement in team performance post-interval can be afforded. These results are interpreted as perturbation of established coordination patterns due to team mixing leading to more flexible and adaptive teams. Implications for process-oriented research are also considered.

2. UAV Human Factors: Operator Perspectives

The Cognitive Engineering Research Institutes First Annual Human Factors of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) Workshop, held on May 24–25, 2004 in Chandler Arizona, and Second Annual Human Factors of UAVs Workshop, held on May 25–26, 2005 in Mesa Arizona, brought to light many human factors issues regarding the technology and operation of UAVs. An integral part of the event was the involvement of military UAV operators from the U.S. Air Force (USAF), U.S. Navy, and U.S. Army. The involvement of UAV operators in the workshops was valuable in linking developers and human factors researchers in the improvement of UAV systems and operations – a practice that is too often implemented only after a system is deployed and the problems are found. The experience of operators serves as a “users account” of the issues and problems concerning the operation of UAVs. The fact that operators have had first hand experience in operating UAVs provides a unique perspective to the problem of identifying the most pressing human factors issues. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the perspectives of two UAV operators that helped to set the tone for the entire First Annual Human Factors of UAVs Workshop.

Hemispheric Differences for Visual Matrix Processing: Stimulus Size and Spatial Frequency Effects

Hemispheric processing differences were assessed by presenting square matrices that varied in size and the number of filled-in cells. Subjects judged whether the matrix contained an even or odd number of filled cells. Experiment 1 employed relatively small matrix sizes (2 x 2, 3 x 3, and 4 x 4), and Experiment 2 employed relatively large matrix sizes (4 x 4, 6 x 6, and 8 x 8). Response time was shorter and error rates lower for left visual field/right hemisphere (LVF/RH) presentations compared to right visual field/left hemisphere (RVF/LH) presentations, with the larger matrices demonstrating the strongest visual field/hemispheric effects. Increases in the number of filled cells contributed to increases for the LVF/RH response time advantage only for the larger arrays. Analysis of the data from both studies collapsed across the number of filled cells produced highly consistent LVF/RH advantages for both response time and error rate, with stronger LVF/RH advantages found for the larger matrix sizes of both studies. The findings suggest that visual stimulus spatial frequency is a key determinant of hemispheric processing advantages, but that this factor is constrained by stimulus size variation. Theoretical implications with respect to the hemispheric processing double filtering by frequency model are discussed.

22. Guiding the Design of a Deployable UAV Operations Cell

Todays battlespace is a very complex system of humans and technology. It could be thought of as a system of layers – where there might be a layer of ground operations and a layer of air operations. Within the air operations layer exists two additional layers of manned air operations and unmanned air operations. If you peel back all layers of todays battlespace and just view the “unmanned air operations” layer, you will find another complex system of humans and technology working as just one element of the overall system. This system of uninhabited air operations might consist of different types of uninhabited air vehicles (e.g., Predator, Hunter, etc.) performing different types of missions (e.g., Intelligence, Reconnaissance, Surveillance-IRS; IRS-strike; search and rescue, etc.).

1. CERI Human Factors of UAVs: 2004 and 2005 Workshop Overviews

The great success of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in performing near-real time tactical, reconnaissance, intelligence, surveillance and other various missions has attracted broad attention from military and civilian communities. A critical contribution to the increase and extension of UAV applications, resides in the separation of pilot and vehicle allowing the operator to avoid dangerous and harmful situations. However, this apparent benefit has the potential to lead to problems when the role of humans in remotely operating “unmanned” vehicles is not considered. Although, UAVs do not carry humans onboard, they do require human control and maintenance. To control UAVs, skilled and coordinated work of operators on the ground is required.