The rapid growth of aircraft technology enables to automate many subtasks related to platform control of a Maritime Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MUAV). Therefore, one of the most important tasks of the operator('s) of a MUAV is operating the mission payload, which is usually a video camera. The footprint or image of the camera depends on numerous degrees of freedom, i.e. heading of the MUAV, heading and pitch of the camera, altitude, zoom factor. Combined with a limited bandwidtther shipÄresulting in low update rates of the camera imageÄthis may lead to several problems for opera-tors, including loss of situational awareness and problems in tracking targets. Because the Royal Netherlands Navy is closely monitoring the developments, the TNO Human Factors Research Institute is involved in several studies to explore possibilities to support operators. This report describes two experiments in which the operator of a MUAV camera is supported by synthetic visual motion informa-tion. On the basis of knowledge about the present position and orientation of MUAV and camera, system characteristics, and control inputs, an artificial grid of perpendicular lines in the camera image can be presented that specifies the various components of MUAV- or camera motion. This means that when the camera image is refreshed with lower update frequencies, the perpendicular lines move as it were over a static camera image. It is expected that this synthetic image augmentation will help the operator in perceiving and separating move-ments of MUAV and camera, and thus improves performance of the operator. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments. In the first experiment subjects had to track a moving target ship from a moving MUAV platform, which meant compen-sating for translations and rotations of both the ship and the MUAV. The results showed a significant positive effect of synthetic image augmentation. This effect became stronger in the conditions with low update frequencies: up to a factor two in the 0.5 Hz update rate conditions. The second experiment involved a situational awareness task. In this task subjects had to point the camera at the position of a previous depicted target ship after imposed translations and rotations during 15 s. This experiment too shows a significant positive effect of synthetic image aug-mentation, which increases in the conditions with lower update frequency. Relative situational awareness is improved. Although it is not clear not clearhough it is not clear whether the second experiment really indicates a improved absolute situational awareness in the presence of synthetic image augmentation, it does show the usefulness of the principle. The present experiments were conducted to investigate the potential benefits of synthetic image augmentation in operating a MUAV. The results are promising, and ask for further exploration of the applications of synthetic image augmenta-tion. Coming experiments will be designed to test a new developed form of synthetic image augmentation in which the present principle of the perpendicular lines is combined with a more conventional head-up display. Furthermore a different test for situational awareness will be applied.
Op basis van inherente systeemkennis van een MUAV kan direct waarneembare visuele informatie in de vorm van een grid gegenereerd worden. Dit kan compenseren voor beelden met een lage opfrisfrequentie.