Design and evaluation of a workload-adaptive associate system for cockpit crews

Abstract

This article describes and validates a concept of a workload-adaptive associate system for military helicopter crews. We use adaptive automation to support helicopter pilots during Manned-Unmanned Teaming missions, where the crew of a manned helicopter operates several unmanned aerial vehicles from the cockpit. We introduce a cognitive agent, which behaves like an additional, artificial crew member. It dynamically adjusts its level of assistance by choosing different workload-adapted strategies of assistive intervention depending on free mental resources of the crew. To evaluate the prototype, we conducted an extensive pilot-in-the-loop campaign and analyze situations of “near misses”, where the associate system corrects human erroneous behavior.