Showing papers on "Situation awareness published in 2005"

Smart video surveillance: exploring the concept of multiscale spatiotemporal tracking

Abstract: Situation awareness is the key to security. Awareness requires information that spans multiple scales of space and time. Smart video surveillance systems are capable of enhancing situational awareness across multiple scales of space and time. However, at the present time, the component technologies are evolving in isolation. To provide comprehensive, nonintrusive situation awareness, it is imperative to address the challenge of multiscale, spatiotemporal tracking. This article explores the concepts of multiscale spatiotemporal tracking through the use of real-time video analysis, active cameras, multiple object models, and long-term pattern analysis to provide comprehensive situation awareness.

Driver behaviour with adaptive cruise control

Abstract: This paper reports on the evaluation of adaptive cruise control (ACC) from a psychological perspective. It was anticipated that ACC would have an effect upon the psychology of driving, i.e. make the driver feel like they have less control, reduce the level of trust in the vehicle, make drivers less situationally aware, but workload might be reduced and driving might be less stressful. Drivers were asked to drive in a driving simulator under manual and ACC conditions. Analysis of variance techniques were used to determine the effects of workload (i.e. amount of traffic) and feedback (i.e. degree of information from the ACC system) on the psychological variables measured (i.e. locus of control, trust, workload, stress, mental models and situation awareness). The results showed that: locus of control and trust were unaffected by ACC, whereas situation awareness, workload and stress were reduced by ACC. Ways of improving situation awareness could include cues to help the driver predict vehicle trajectory and identify conflicts.

System for sensing environmental conditions

Abstract: A system and method for facilitating measurement of environmental conditions such as might be used in emergencies or other situational awareness applications. The method includes dispersing several networked nodes in a region, the nodes being coupled to one or more sensors, and then employing the one or more sensors to sense one or more environmental conditions and providing sensed data in response thereto. In a more specific embodiment, the region exhibits a fire, and the method further includes utilizing the sensed data to predict fire conditions, such as fire movement and temperature. A controller may be employed to selectively adjust power to one or more sensors based on predetermined priorities associated with sensed data output from the one or more sensors.

A case of the birth and death of a high reliability healthcare organisation

Abstract: High reliability organisations (HROs) are those in which errors rarely occur. To accomplish this they conduct relatively error free operations over long periods of time and make consistently good decisions resulting in high quality and reliability. Some organisational processes that characterise HROs are process auditing, implementing appropriate reward systems, avoiding quality degradation, appropriately perceiving that risk exists and developing strategies to deal with it, and command and control. Command and control processes include migrating decision making, redundancy in people or hardware, developing situational awareness, formal rules and procedures, and training. These processes must be tailored to the specific organisation implementing them. These processes were applied to a paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) where care was derived from problem solving methodology rather than protocol. After a leadership change, the unit returned to the hierarchical medical model of care. Important outcome variables such as infant mortality, patient return to the PICU after discharge, days on the PICU, air transports, degraded. Implications for clinical practice include providing caregivers with sufficient flexibility to meet changing situations, encouraging teamwork, and avoiding shaming, naming, and blaming.

Incident Command Skills in the Management of an Oil Industry Drilling Incident: a Case Study

Abstract: The successful management of a complex, hazardous event in many domains demands a high level of incident command skills. In the oil and gas exploration and production industry, these skills were required by members of an Incident Management Team (IMT) established to respond the failure of a drilling riser in the Gulf of Mexico. When an incident occurs, members of an industrial IMT form an interdisciplinary, interdependent, but ad-hoc team. As actual experience of dealing with major incidents of this nature is relatively rare, IMT members have to rely on emergency exercises in training, along with existing domain-specific knowledge. Following a serious incident on an offshore drilling rig, semi-structured interviews with the on-shore strategic and tactical level IMT members (n=7) were conducted. These interviews have resulted in the identification and definition of incident command skills for members of an industrial IMT, namely decision making, situation awareness, communication, leadership, and teamwork, all of which can be affected by stress, as well as organisational factors that influenced the outcome of the incident. Limitations in current incident management training were identified, namely the need for specific incident command skills training. A framework is suggested around which specific incident command skills training can be structured. Key learnings from this case study are also presented which can provide guidance for the training and preparation of industrial incident management teams.

Deploying Air-Ground Multi-Robot Teams in Urban Environments

Abstract: We present some of the work performed in the GRASP Laboratory with the objective of deploying multi-robot teams in urban environments. Specifically, we focus on three important issues in this type of mission: the development of tools for providing situational awareness, the use of air and ground vehicles for cooperative sensing and the construction of radio maps to keep team connectivity. We describe the main approaches that we have been using for tackling these issues and present some preliminary results from experiments conducted with our team of air and ground vehicles.

SAWA: an assistant for higher-level fusion and situation awareness

Abstract: Situation awareness involves the identification and monitoring of relationships among level-one objects. This problem in general is intractable (i.e., there is a potentially infinite number of relations that could be tracked) and thus requires additional constraints and guidance defined by the user if there is to be any hope of creating practical situation awareness systems. This paper describes a Situation Awareness Assistant (SAWA) that facilitates the development of user-defined domain knowledge in the form of formal ontologies and rule sets and then permits the application of the domain knowledge to the monitoring of relevant relations as they occur in evolving situations. SAWA includes tools for developing ontologies in OWL and rules in SWRL and provides runtime components for collecting event data, storing and querying the data, monitoring relevant relations and viewing the results through a graphical user interface. An application of SAWA to a scenario from the domain of supply logistics is also presented.

The Future of Disaster Response: Humans Working with Multiagent Teams using DEFACTO.

Abstract: When addressing terrorist threats we must give special attention to both prevention and disaster response. Enabling effective interactions between agent teams and humans for disaster response is a critical area of research, with encouraging progress in the past few years. However, previous work suffers from two key limitations: (i) limited human situational awareness, reducing human effectiveness in directing agent teams and (ii) the agent team’s rigid interaction strategies that limit team performance. This paper focuses on a novel disaster response software prototype, called DEFACTO (Demonstrating Effective Flexible Agent Coordination of Teams through Omnipresence). DEFACTO is based on a software proxy architecture and 3D visualization system, which addresses the two limitations described above. First, the 3D visualization interface enables human virtual omnipresence in the environment, improving human situational awareness and ability to assist agents. Second, generalizing past work on adjustable autonomy, the agent team chooses among a variety of “team-level” interaction strategies, even excluding humans from the loop in extreme cir-

Synthetic Vision System for Improving Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Operator Situation Awareness

Abstract: The Air Force Research Laboratory's Human Effectiveness Directorate (AFRL/HE) supports research addressing human factors associated with Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) operator control stations. Recent research, in collaboration with Rapid Imaging Software, Inc., has focused on determining the value of combining synthetic vision data with live camera video presented on a UAV control station display. Information is constructed from databases (e.g., terrain, cultural features, pre-mission plan, etc.), as well as numerous information updates via networked communication with other sources (e.g., weather, intel). This information is overlaid conformal, in real time, onto the dynamic camera video image display presented to operators. Synthetic vision overlay technology is expected to improve operator situation awareness by highlighting key spatial information elements of interest directly onto the video image, such as threat locations, expected locations of targets, landmarks, emergency airfields, etc. Also, it may help maintain an operator"s situation awareness during periods of video datalink degradation/dropout and when operating in conditions of poor visibility. Additionally, this technology may serve as an intuitive means of distributed communications between geographically separated users. This paper discusses the tailoring of synthetic overlay technology for several UAV applications. Pertinent human factors issues are detailed, as well as the usability, simulation, and flight test evaluations required to determine how best to combine synthetic visual data with live camera video presented on a ground control station display and validate that a synthetic vision system is beneficial for UAV applications.© (2005) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Maritime situation monitoring and awareness using learning mechanisms

Abstract: This paper addresses maritime situation awareness by using cognitively inspired algorithms to learn behavioral patterns at a variety of conceptual, spatial, and temporal levels. The algorithms form the basis for a system that takes real-time tracking information and uses continuous on-the-fly learning that enables concurrent recognition of patterns of current motion states of single vessels in local vicinity. Learned patterns include routine behaviors as well as illegal, unsafe, threatening, and anomalous behaviors. Continuous learning enables the models to adapt well to evolving situations while maintaining high levels of performance. The learning combines two components: an unsupervised clustering algorithm, and a supervised mapping and labeling algorithm. Operator input can guide system learning. Event-level features of our learning system using simulated and recorded data are described

Team communication in the operating room

Abstract: Good communication is vital for safe patient care and good team functioning, not only in the Operating Room but also in all areas of healthcare, as well as in other safety critical industries. Examples from aviation demonstrate both the failures and the successes that can arise from poor and excellent communication. There are six components of effective teamwork: situational awareness, problem identification, decision making, workload distribution, time management and conflict resolution. Practising these, and self-evaluation of team communication, should help to improve team function and contribute to making patient care safer.

Cognitive Readiness in Network-Centric Operations

Abstract: : Network-centric warfare is the basis of doctrine and operations for the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force. Fundamental to network-centric warfare is the availability of accurate, detailed, real-time information at all levels of command and control. Network-centric operations and the associated self-synchronization put a premium on the performance of individual soldiers and small teams at all levels of command and control. A critical component of such performance is the ability to integrate information, anticipate, and plan. These executive mental functions depend on the prefrontal cortex of the brain for successful execution. Various physiological stressors degrade cognitive performance. These include carrying excessive loads, dehydration, hypothermia, sleep loss (which degrades prefrontal cortex function directly), and nutritional or caloric deficiencies. Soldiers in the network-centric force will have sensors and software constituting a warfighter physiological status monitor (WPSM) incorporated into the individual soldier computer, linking them through the network-centric warfare network. These will provide information on their biomedical status with respect to these performance-degrading stressors. This information will be used by commanders to manage biomedical resupply (water, food, sleep, etc.) to sustain performance. Embedded and other measures of cognitive performance will be included in the suite of sensors and software. With these systems in place, commanders will have the tools at hand to sustain individual and unit performance in the networked force.

Unmanned air vehicle, integrated weapon platform, avionics system and control method

Abstract: A small, reusable interceptor unmanned air vehicle (UAV), an avionics control system for the UAV, a design method for the UAV and a method for controlling the UAV, for interdiction of small scale air, water and ground threats. The UAV includes a high performance airframe with integrated weapon and avionics platforms. Design of the UAV first involves the selection of a suitable weapon, then the design of the interceptor airframe to achieve weapon aiming via airframe maneuvering. The UAV utilizes an avionics control system that is vehicle-centric and, as such, provides for a high degree of autonomous control of the UAV. A situational awareness processor has access to a suite of disparate sensors that provide data for intelligently (autonomously) carrying out various mission scenarios. A flight control processor operationally integrated with the situational awareness processor includes a pilot controller and an autopilot controller for flying and maneuvering the UAV.

Evaluating algorithmic techniques in supporting situation awareness

Abstract: How well does an algorithm support its purpose and user base? Has automation provided the user with the ability to augment their production, quality or responsiveness? In a number of systems today these questions can be answered by either Measures of Performance (MOP) or Measures of Effectiveness (MOE). However, the fusion community has not yet developed sufficient measures and has only recently devoted a concerted effort to address this deficiency. In this paper, we will summarize work in metrics for the lower levels of fusion (object ID, tracking, etc) and discuss whether these same metrics still apply to the higher levels (Situation Awareness), or if other approaches are necessary. We conclude this paper with a set of future activities and direction.

Modeling Shared Situation Awareness

Abstract: This study presents an initial computational model of shared situation awareness (SA) based upon data collected from a simulated training exercise, designed to mimic real life events in a military personnel recovery center. Situation awareness was measured during the exercise using the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT). Our initial model examined how well five factors (social network distance, physical distance, rank similarity, branch similarity, and experience similarity) predicted shared SA. Overall, regression analyses highlighted the significant influence of geographical distribution (physical distance) on the development of shared SA and frequency of communications amongst team members. The discussion centers on the need for developing useful technological tools and techniques for supporting communication and collaboration among distributed teams.

Human-Robot interaction through mixed-initiative planning for rescue and search rovers

Abstract: We present an approach to human-robot interaction in Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) domains based on reactive mixed-initiative planning. A model-based executive monitoring system is used to coordinate the operator's interventions and the concurrent activities of a rescue rover. In this setting, the user's and the robot's activities are coordinated by a continuos reactive planning process. We show the advantages of this approach for both the operator situation awareness and human-robot interaction during rescue missions. We present the implementation of the control architecture on a robotic system (DORO) providing some experimental results obtained from testing in rescue arenas.

Coordinated awareness of situation by teams (CAST): Measuring team situation awareness of a communication glitch

Abstract: A coordination-based measure of team situation awareness is presented and contrasted with knowledge-based measurement. The measure is applied to team awareness of a communication channel failure (g...

Information assurance visualizations for specific stages of situational awareness and intended uses: lessons learned

Abstract: Information visualization has proven to be a valuable tool for working more effectively with complex data and maintaining situational awareness in demanding operational domains. Unfortunately, many applications of visualization technology fall short of expectations because the technology is used inappropriately - the wrong tool applied in the wrong way. A study of visualization techniques as applied to one particularly demanding area, information assurance, leads to the conclusion that there is a proper and formal way to approach designing visualization techniques for maintaining situational awareness in complex domains. Visualization techniques should be specifically designed or selected to align with one of the three identified stages of situational awareness - perception, comprehension, or projection -and with one of five standard uses of visualization - monitoring, inspecting, exploring, forecasting, or communicating. Greater value can be realized by selecting the right visualization technique to focus on each operational task, rather than searching for a single all-encompassing solution to fit every need. Examples of how visualizations can be used to support specific tasks of IA analysis are presented, with examples based on a review of available literature, a formal cognitive task analysis performed by the authors, and lessons learned from direct experience with developing IA visualizations and training analysts in their use.

The design of VisFlowConnect-IP: a link analysis system for IP security situational awareness

Abstract: Visualization of IP-based traffic dynamics on networks is a challenging task due to large data volume and the complex, temporal relationships between hosts. We present the architecture of VisFlowConnect-IP, a powerful new tool to visualize IP network traffic flow dynamics for security situational awareness. VisFlowConnect-IP allows an operator to visually assess the connectivity of large and complex networks on a single screen. It provides an overall view of the entire network and filter/drill-down features that allow operators to request more detailed information. Preliminary reports from several organizations using this tool report increased responsiveness to security events as well as new insights into understanding the security dynamics of their networks. In this paper we focus specifically on the design decisions made during the VisFlowConnect development process so that others may learn from our experience. The current VisFlowConnect architecture - the result of these design decisions - is extensible to processing other high-volume multi-dimensional data streams where link connectivity/activity is a focus of study. We report experimental results quantifying the scalability of the underlying algorithms for representing link analysis given continuous high-volume traffic flows as input.

A situation awareness model applied to multiple domains

Abstract: Full Spectrum Dominance, or as defined by Joint Vision 2020, the ability to be persuasive in peace, decisive in war and preeminent in any form of conflict, cannot be accomplished without the ability to know what the adversary is currently doing as well as the capacity to correctly anticipate the adversary's future actions. A key component in the ability to predict the adversary's intention is Situation Awareness (SA). In this paper we provide a discussion of an SA model, examine a specific instantiation of the model and demonstrate how it has been applied to two specific domains: Global Monitoring and Cyber Awareness. We conclude this paper with a discussion on future work.

Situation Awareness in an Augmented Reality Cockpit: Design, Viewpoints and Cognitive Glue

Abstract: The Taxiway Navigation and Situation Awareness (T-NASA) system is a prototype augmented reality commercial airline cockpit display suite developed to increase efficiency and enhance situation awareness (SA) during airport surface taxi operations. The T-NASA system consists of a head-up display (HUD) and an electronic moving map (EMM), which allow for the display of navigation information using augmented reality techniques. The T-NASA HUD, an egocentric augmented reality display, uses "scene-linked symbology" (Foyle et al., 1996), derived from a set of theoretically-derived and experimentally-validated principles to enhance local guidance and route awareness. The EMM, is an exocentric perspective display that enhances route and global awareness. The principles for enhancing situation awareness in augmented reality systems are reviewed.

Situational awareness of a coordinated cyber attack

Abstract: As technology continues to advance, services and capabilities become computerized, and an ever increasing amount of business is conducted electronically the threat of cyber attacks gets compounded by the complexity of such attacks and the criticality of the information which must be secured. A new age of virtual warfare has dawned in which seconds can differentiate between the protection of vital information and/or services and a malicious attacker attaining their goal. In this paper we present a novel approach in the real-time detection of multistage coordinated cyber attacks and the promising initial testing results we have obtained. We introduce INFERD (INformation Fusion Engine for Real-time Decision-making), an adaptable information fusion engine which performs fusion at levels zero, one, and two to provide real-time situational assessment and its application to the cyber domain in the ECCARS (Event Correlation for Cyber Attack Recognition System) system. The advantages to our approach are fourfold: (1) The complexity of the attacks which we consider, (2) the level of abstraction in which the analyst interacts with the attack scenarios, (3) the speed at which the information fusion is presented and performed, and (4) our disregard for ad-hoc rules or a priori parameters.

The Defacto System: Coordinating Human-Agent Teams for the Future of Disaster Response

Abstract: Enabling effective interactions between agent teams and humans for disaster response is a critical area of research, with encouraging progress in the past few years. However, previous work suffers from two key limitations: (i) limited human situational awareness, reducing human effectiveness in directing agent teams and (ii) the agent team’s rigid interaction strategies that limit team performance. This paper presents a software prototype called DEFACTO (Demonstrating Effective Flexible Agent Coordination of Teams through Omnipresence). DEFACTO is based on a software proxy architecture and 3D visualization system, which addresses the two limitations described above. First, the 3D visualization interface enables human virtual omnipresence in the environment, improving human situational awareness and ability to assist agents. Second, generalizing past work on adjustable autonomy, the agent team chooses among a variety of “team-level” interaction strategies, even excluding humans from the loop in extreme circumstances.

Implementation of a situation awareness assessment tool for evaluation of human-robot interfaces

Abstract: In this paper, we outline a methodology for evaluating the situation awareness (SA) provided by a supervisory interface for an autonomous on-road vehicle. Our goal is to be able to use the evaluations to compare interface designs with respect to how well each facilitates the users' acquisition of SA. We used Endsely's Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT) (Endsely, 1988) and developed scenarios and assessment questions appropriate for supervisors of autonomous on-road driving vehicles. We describe the results of two experiments used to refine our SA assessment implementation. In a third experiment, we applied the refined implementation to a graphical user interface we developed to test the sensitivity of our SAGAT implementation. We discuss the results of this experiment and implications for applying the SAGAT methodology to supervisory user interfaces for autonomous vehicles.

Towards Vision-Based UAV Situation Awareness

Abstract: During the development of an autonomous mini helicopter UAV at the Delft University of Technology, the objective is to improve the capabilities, the safety and the degree of autonomy at the same time within the severe weight limitations imposed by the vehicle. The weight limitation implies a minimal amount of sensors while autonomy, redundancy and extra capabilities require a lot of information. Motivated by the increasing computer power, the improving quality of digital imaging and the increasing performance of digital image analysis, this paper proposes “camera images” as extra source of information for the guidance and situation awareness of a gps position and inertial attitude stabilized UAV helicopter. The analysis of video together with the other onboard sensor data can greatly enhance the systems overall situation awareness. Simulation and real flight tests show that intelligent analysis of the steaming images is capable of providing a huge amount of mission-relevant knowledge. Moreover, since images contain a lot of redundant information, the onboard video can partially replace other sensors and thus cope with a variety of failures of the other sensors onboard the UAV; in occurrence the magnetometer, gps and imu. However, since analysis of images only provides statistical information about just parts of the surroundings, visual observations should be used carefully. Based on the idea that as long as the system knows the certainty of its observations it can react in accordance, the uncertainties are reduced where possible using active vision and biologically inspired algorithms. The vision-based awareness algorithms can detect and track landing pads, provide guidance towards objects of interest and reconstruct 3D terrain information. They can even provide answers to survive magnetic, gps and some inertial sensor failures using only a single camera and they can provide collision avoidance reflexes to avoid fatal collisions. The proposed system features a significant increase in situation awareness for a very modest weight and cost. Combining additional capabilities with additional safety through situation awareness in a single low-cost sensor is particularly important as weight, cost and safety are dominant factors of UAV development.

A Dialectic for Network Centric Warfare

Abstract: : The US variant of NCW has been refined into the following form: The tenets of NCW are: 1. A robustly networked force improves information sharing. 2. Information sharing and collaboration enhance the quality of information and shared situational awareness. 3. Shared situational awareness enables self-synchronization. 4. These, in turn, dramatically increase mission effectiveness. In Australia, NCW has been defined with five tenets: 1. Professional mastery is essential to NCW. 2. Mission command will remain an effective command philosophy into the future. 3. Information and intelligence will be shared if a network is built by connecting engagement systems, sensor systems and command and control systems. 4. Robust networks will allow the ADF and supporting agencies to collaborate more effectively and achieve shared situational awareness. 5. Shared situational awareness will enable self-synchronisation, which helps warfighters to adapt to changing circumstances and allows them to apply multidimensional manoeuvre. The first two tenets have no equivalent representation in US NCW and are unique to Australian NCW. These two tenets provide some recognition of human aspects of NCW. Tenet 3 maps to US tenet 1, tenet 4 maps to US tenet 2, tenet 5 maps to US tenets 3 and 4. Throughout the following, we will retain a focus on the four US tenets, augmented by the human aspects of the Australian tenets.

Declutter of graphical tcas targets to improve situational awareness

Abstract: Traffic collision and avoidance systems and methods for a host aircraft. The system receives traffic information from one or more target aircraft, determines threat levels of target aircraft associated with the received traffic information, generates one or more objects based on the determined threat levels and a pre-defined threat level, and displays the generated one or more objects that are associated with threat levels within the pre-defined threat level. A first indicator that indicates lateral position relative to the host aircraft and a second indicator that indicates vertical direction of travel of the associated target aircraft are also displayed.