Mission Completion Time Is Sensitive To Teleoperation Performance During Simulated Reconnaissance Missions With A Micro-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

In prior research, we found that temporal measures were affected by input device (game controller vs. mouse); however, other measures were not (e.g., number of targets detected, or number of collisions). The main purpose of the present research was to investigate the sensitivity of a temporal performance measure for simulated reconnaissance missions. Instead of measuring number of targets photographed in a fixed amount of time, this study measured time to photograph a set number of targets. Twenty participants went through simulation-based micro-unmanned aerial vehicle operator training, including three skill courses and two reconnaissance missions. Half the participants used a mouse as their input device, whereas the rest used a game controller. Mission completion time was found to be faster when participants used the game controller than when they used the mouse, for both skill missions and reconnaissance missions. Effective simulation-based training for micro-unmanned vehicles operators requires both relevant simulated missions and objective performance feedback and mastery criteria. These results suggest that mission completion time could provide a good performance measure for this purpose