Experimental Evaluation of UAV Task Delegation Methods

The ability to guide multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from a fighter-jet cockpit is a key aspect of Manned-Unmanned Teaming. Today’s approaches to UAV guidance are only partially suitable for this application, emphasizing the requirement for the development of new guidance paradigms and interaction methods. In pursuit of this goal, this article evaluates three interaction methods for guiding UAVs through task delegation, based on touchscreen gestures, voice control, and a combination of eye-tracking and buttons. The presented methods were evaluated in a human-in-the-loop simulator study with eight fighter-jet pilots. In the study, the participants performed twelve missions under different conditions, in which they delegated tasks to three UAVs in parallel. Voice control resulted in the highest mission performance and participant acceptance. The negative impact of display clutter on touchscreen and eye-tracking methods may have contributed to this result. Results also indicated resource conflicts when primary and secondary tasks shared modalities. When given the freedom to choose methods, most participants alternated between methods, depending on specific mission conditions. We conclude that providing multiple interaction methods is useful to improve resilience and suggest providing two dissimilar methods.