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.

Design of human–machine interactions in light of domain-dependence of human-centered automation

Abstract: This paper discusses that human-centered automation for traffic safety can vary depending on transportation mode. Quality of human operators and time-criticality are factors characterizing the domain-dependence. The questions asked in this paper are: (1) Does the statement that, “The human must be in command,” have to hold at all times and on every occasion, and in every transportation mode? and (2) What the automation may do when it detected the human’s inappropriate behavior or performance while monitoring the human? Is it allowed only to give some warnings? Or, is it allowed to act autonomously to resolve the detected problem? This paper also argues that human-centered automation must be multi-layered, by taking into account not only enhancement of situation awareness but also trading of authority between humans and machines.

Distributed Indoor Positioning System With Inertial Measurements and Map Matching

Abstract: Accurate position information is nowadays very important in many applications. For instance, maintaining the situation awareness in command center in emergency operations is very crucial. Due to signal strength attenuation and multipath, Global Navigation Satellite Systems are not suitable for indoor navigation purposes. Radio network-based positioning techniques, such as wireless local area network, require local infrastructure that is often vulnerable in emergency situations. We propose here a distributed system for personal positioning based on inertial sensors. The system consists of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) connected to a radio carried by a person and the server connected to another radio. Step length and heading estimation is computed in the IMU and sent to the server. On the server side, the position is estimated using particle filter-based map matching. The benefit of the distributed architecture is that the computational capacity can be kept very low on the user side, which leads to long operation time as power consumption also remains very low.

From images to traffic behavior - A UAV tracking and monitoring application

Abstract: An implemented system for achieving high level situation awareness about traffic situations in an urban area is described. It takes as input sequences of color and thermal images which are used to construct and maintain qualitative object structures and to recognize the traffic behavior of the tracked vehicles in real time. The system is tested both in simulation and on data collected during test flights. To facilitate the signal to symbol transformation and the easy integration of the streams of data from the sensors with the GIS and the chronicle recognition system, DyKnow, a stream-based knowledge processing middleware, is used. It handles the processing of streams, including the temporal aspects of merging and synchronizing streams, and provides suitable abstractions to allow high level reasoning and narrow the sense reasoning gap.

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.

Knowledge-based vessel position prediction using historical AIS data

Abstract: The improvement in Maritime Situational Awareness (MSA), or the capability of understanding events, circumstances and activities within and impacting the maritime environment, is nowadays of paramount importance for safety and security. Enhancing coverage of existing technologies such as Automatic Identification System (AIS) provides the possibility to integrate and enrich services and information already available in the maritime domain. In this scenario, the prediction of vessels position is essential to increase the MSA and build the Maritime Situational Picture (MSP), namely the map of the ships located in a certain Area Of Interest (AOI) at a desired time. The integration of de-facto maritime traffic routes information in the vessel prediction process has the appealing potential to provide a more accurate picture of what is happening at sea by exploiting the knowledge of historical vessel positioning data. In this paper, we propose a Bayesian vessel prediction algorithm based on a Particle Filter (PF). The system, aided by the knowledge of traffic routes, aims to enhance the quality of the vessel position prediction. Experimental results are presented, evaluating the algorithm in the specific area between the Gibraltar passage and the Dover Strait using real AIS data.