Situation awareness

About: Situation awareness is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 7380 publications have been published within this topic receiving 108695 citations. The topic is also known as: SA & situational awareness.

Modeling situation awareness in human-like agents using mental models

Abstract: In order for agents to be able to act intelligently in an environment, a first necessary step is to become aware of the current situation in the environment. Forming such awareness is not a trivial matter. Appropriate observations should be selected by the agent, and the observation results should be interpreted and combined into one coherent picture. Humans use dedicated mental models which represent the relationships between various observations and the formation of beliefs about the environment, which then again direct the further observations to be performed. In this paper, a generic agent model for situation awareness is proposed that is able to take a mental model as input, and utilize this model to create a picture of the current situation. In order to show the suitability of the approach, it has been applied within the domain of F-16 fighter pilot training for which a dedicated mental model has been specified, and simulations experiments have been conducted.

Knowledge-Based Smart City Service System

Abstract: A smart city can be defined as a city exploiting information and communication technologies to enhance the quality of life of its citizens by providing them with improved services while ensuring a conscious use of the available limited resources. This paper introduces a conceptual framework for the smart city, namely, the Smart City Service System. The framework proposes a vision of the smart city as a service system according to the principles of the Service-Dominant Logic and the service science theories. The rationale is that the services offered within the city can be improved and optimized via the exploitation of information shared by the citizens. The Smart City Service System is implemented as an ontology-based system that supports the decision-making processes at the government level through reasoning and inference processes, providing the decision-makers with a common operational picture of what is happening in the city. A case study related to the local public transportation service is proposed to demonstrate the feasibility and validity of the framework. An experimental evaluation using the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT) has been performed to measure the impact of the framework on the decision-makers’ level of situation awareness.

User interface design for military AR applications

Abstract: Designing a user interface for military situation awareness presents challenges for managing information in a useful and usable manner. We present an integrated set of functions for the presentation of and interaction with information for a mobile augmented reality application for military applications. Our research has concentrated on four areas. We filter information based on relevance to the user (in turn based on location), evaluate methods for presenting information that represents entities occluded from the user’s view, enable interaction through a top-down map view metaphor akin to current techniques used in the military, and facilitate collaboration with other mobile users and/or a command center. In addition, we refined the user interface architecture to conform to requirements from subject matter experts. We discuss the lessons learned in our work and directions for future research.

Haptic Feedback in Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Teleoperation with Time Delay

Abstract: In the teleoperation of an uninhabited aerial vehicle, haptic feedback can be used to provide useful information through the sense of touch. Although this can improve performance and enhance situation awareness, time delays caused by signal transmission generally induce control problems with haptic feedback, causing unsafe operations. Wave variables have been suggested to cope with the control problems in bilateral human-machine systems with time delay. Very little has been reported, however, on effects related to human control activity and workload when using wave variables. This paper describes a theoretical analysis of using wave variables to enhance a collision-avoidance system for visual and haptic uninhabited aerial vehicle teleoperation with time delay. An experiment was conducted to evaluate its effectiveness regarding operator performance, control activity, workload, and the safety of operation. Results indicate that wave variables are indeed successful in improving human performance. The number of collisions, operator control activity, and workload all decreased. Whereas performance and control activity were equivalent to the situation of haptic feedback without time delay, workload remained higher.

Adaptive teams of autonomous aerial and ground robots for situational awareness: Field Reports

Abstract: In this paper, we report on the integration challenges of the various component technologies developed toward the establishment of a framework for deploying an adaptive system of heterogeneous robots for urban surveillance. In our integrated experiment and demonstration, aerial robots generate maps that are used to design navigation controllers and plan missions for the team. A team of ground robots constructs a radio-signal strength map that is used as an aid for planning missions. Multiple robots establish a mobile ad hoc communication network that is aware of the radio-signal strength between nodes, and can adapt to changing conditions to maintain connectivity. Finally, the team of aerial and ground robots is able to monitor a small village, and search for and localize human targets by the color of the uniform, while ensuring that the information from the team is available to a remotely located human operator. The key component technologies and contributions include: (a) Mission specification and planning software; (b) exploration and mapping of radio-signal strengths in an urban environment; (c) programming abstractions and composition of controllers for multirobot deployment; (d) cooperative control strategies for search, identification, and localization of targets; and (e) three-dimensional mapping in an urban setting. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.