Publication Date
2013
Document Type
Thesis
Committee Members
Frank Ciarallo (Committee Member), Mary Fendley (Advisor), Subhashini Ganapathy (Committee Member)
Degree Name
Master of Science in Engineering (MSEgr)
Abstract
Human supervisory control (HSC) systems that require intermittent human input of commands to create actions within the system are helpful in reducing the human's mental workload (MWL). HSC systems are commonly employed in the piloting and control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). As the ratio of UAVs to operators increases there is a clear need to understand the effort required to complete task requirements. Specifically, this research explored MWL relative to multi-modal communications using subjective and physiological measures. To accomplish this, a cognitive model was developed to understand the relationship between tasks and MWL. MWL was manipulated by measuring three in-flight variables: increased communication tasks, task interruptions, and a combination of these two variables. Results showed that task interruptions have the greatest influence on MWL suggesting that reducing the tasks complexity rather than number of UAVs, would be more effective in reducing operator workload.
Page Count
103
Department or Program
Department of Biomedical, Industrial & Human Factors Engineering
Year Degree Awarded
2013
Copyright
Copyright 2013, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may not be modified. All use must give me credit as the original author.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
