Adaptive interfaces for advanced airborne crew stations

This paper discusses several general research and development issues that the authors view as critical to the design of adaptive interfaces for future US Air Force crew stations. Its major intent is to propose and describe three classes of variables and events that are considered to be potentially useful "triggers" for the introduction of functional adaptations to crew station displays and controls. These include the interdependent categories of external-environmental events, internal-physiological and behavioral events. This discussion describes an approach to the development of adaptive interfaces being pursued within the US Air Force Armstrong Laboratory's Human Engineering Division, and evaluated within the Synthesized Immersion Research Environment (SIRE) Facility. It is intended to stimulate discussion and debate on the nature of factors that might reasonably be expected to reliably drive the dynamic processes that can adapt interfaces in real time to enhance the human use of complex tactical aviation systems.