Teleoperation of Unmanned Vehicles: The Human Factor

Unmanned vehicles or robots promise to increase the operational range of the armed forces while reducing the exposition of personnel to hazardous conditions. They have traditionally been in use for aerial surveillance and ground based explosive ordnance disposal. Following the ongoing progress in research and technology, unmanned vehicles have the potential to play a much more versatile role in future conflicts. The use of such systems is already expanding into reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition scenarios. Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies are utilized across a wide range of relevant areas concerning the development, evaluation and operation of unmanned vehicles. Virtual Reality interfaces are of high value for the development process ranging from the technical design phase to the simulation-based evaluation of the human-machine system. A particularly relevant aspect concerning unmanned vehicles represents the operational performance of the human-machine-team. This performance however, is primarily dependant on how effectively a human operator can supervise and control the unmanned system using a given human-machine interface. In this paper we present a task-centric approach to the command and control of unmanned vehicles that differs significantly from the traditional vehicle-centric teleoperation method as used in todays available systems. We believe that thi