Posts Tagged naturalistic decision making
Close Target Reconnaissance: A Field Evaluation of Dismounted Soldiers Utilizing Video Feed From an Unmanned Ground Vehicle in Patrol Missions
Posted by Tal Oron-Gilad in Military & Law Enforcement Applications, News on October 26, 2016
Oron-Gilad and Parmet (2016) in the Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making.
- How is the decision cycle of dismounted soldiers affected by the use of a display device displaying video feed from an unmanned ground vehicle in a patrol mission?
- Via a handheld monocular display, participants received a route map and sensor imagery from the vehicle that was ~20–50 m ahead.
- Twenty-two male participants were divided into two groups, with or without the sensor imagery. Each participant navigated for 2 km in a MOUT training facility, while encountering civilians, moving and stationary suspects, and improvised explosive devices.
- Boyd’s OODA loop (observe–orient–decide–act) framework was used to examine
decisions. - The experimental group was slower to respond to threats and to orient. They also reported higher workload, more difficulties in allocating their attention to their environment, and more frustration.
- The breakdown of performance metrics into the OODA loop components revealed the major difficulties in the decision-making process and highlighted the need for new roles in combat-team setups and for additional training when unmanned vehicle sensor imagery is introduced.
Practitioner Points
•• The use of a handheld monocular device for intelligence gathering of information from a UGV affected participants’ ability to detect events with their own eyes.
•• Soldiers were aware of the toll that display devices had on their operational mission, yet it continuously attracted their attention.
•• Soldiers must gain understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the unmanned vehicle and its sensor video; they should be able to control the pace of its progress.
•• Team setups, where only limited designated roles attend to the sensor video and more than one individual attends to the immediate environment, may be a better setup for utilization of the technology.