Impact of 360¿ Sensor Information on Vehicle Commander Performance

Abstract : Maintenance of local security is essential for the lethality and survivability in modern urban conflicts. Among solutions the U.S. Army is developing is an indirect-vision display (IVD) based sensor system supporting full-spectrum, 360-degree local area awareness. Unfortunately, such display solutions only address part of the challenge, with remaining issues spawned by the properties of human perceptual-cognitive function. The current study examined the influence of threat properties (e.g., threat type, distance, etc.) on detection performance while participants conducted a patrol through a simulated urban area. Participants scanned a virtual environment comprised of static and dynamic entities and reported those that were deemed potential threats. Results showed that the most influential variables were the characteristics of the targets; threats that appeared far away, behind the vehicle, and for short periods of time were most likely missed. Thus, if an IVD system is to be effective, it will be necessary to improve range performance and optimize the amount of viewing time for 360-degree imagery. Some results indicated target salience as also important. As such, real-time image processing may ultimately be necessary to account for perceptual-cognitive factors affecting detection and identification performance.