Mission management in human autonomy teams - an HMI design concept for managing multiple uncrewed aerial systems from a fighter cockpit

Abstract

Future air combat will be a complex interaction of crewed and uncrewed aerial vehicles. While many systems will act highly automated or even autonomously, human operators will remain essential for defining mission objectives, setting priorities, and making decisions that require human judgement. Effective collaboration between the human and the highly automated planning systems appears to be a crucial requirement for the success of such a human autonomy team. We present our human-machine interface (HMI) concept for the collaborative management of multiple drones in a future fighter cockpit – resulting from a user-centered development approach with several fighter pilots. We first used an Abstraction Hierarchy to identify the properties that are relevant to describe a mission plan proposed by the highly automated system. This hierarchical structure was then applied to the HMI design so as to tailor the level of detail of the displayed information precisely to the pilot’s situation-specific needs. This includes that information from the complex planning algorithms is presented to the pilots in a transparent and comprehensible way. Finally, an interaction concept was developed for the pilots to be able to easily input their preferences into the planning system.