The guidance information that is available to the UAV operator typically suffers from limitations of data update rate and system latency. Even when using a flight director command display, the manual control task is considerably more difficult compared to piloting a manned aircraft. Results from earlier research into perspective guidance displays show that these displays provide performance benefits and suggest a reduction of the negative effects of system latency. The current study has shown that in case of limitations of data update rate and system latency the use of a conformal sensor overlay showing a perspective presentation of the trajectory constraints is consistently superior to the flight director command display. The superiority becomes more pronounced with an increase in data latency and a decrease in update rate. The fact that the perspective pathway overlay as used in this study can be implemented on any graphics system that is capable of rendering a set of 2-D vectors makes it a viable candidate for upgrades to current systems.
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