| Tactical air missions place a high visual load on pilots, who must rapidly acquire and synthesize information from displays within the cockpit (near-domain) and events outside of the cockpit (far domain; Martin-Emerson & Wickens, 1997). The development of head-up (HUD) and helmet-mounted displays (HMD), which superimpose near-domain elements onto the far-domain scene and provide visual cueing to target position, has improved performance in target detection scenarios (Fadden, Ververs, & Wickens, 1998; Osgood, Wells, & Meador, 1995). One goal for the present study was to determine the benefits of combining auditory and visual cueing for target-designation performance during a simulated flight-task using a see-through, head-coupled visual display.; Cockpits have limited space for information display, and there is already a high visual demand that may contribute to information overload and increase the probability of pilot error (Reising, Liggett, & Munns, 1999, Weinstein & Wickens 1992). A second goal for the present investigation was to evaluate the role of adaptive cueing interfaces as a means of integrating visual and auditory displays for target designation.; The study was conducted at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Synthesized Immersion Research Environment (SIRE) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Twelve experienced pilots (11 males and 1 female; mean 2652 flight hours) serving at the base participated in the study. Seven target-location cueing conditions were employed. They included a non-cueing control and six cueing interfaces. These head-coupled cueing interfaces featured auditory (headphone-delivered spatialized sound), visual (simulated HMD symbology), fixed multimodal (simultaneous auditory and visual), and adaptive multimodal display configurations.; Designation accuracy was poorest in the non-cueing and auditory display conditions in comparison to the visual, fixed multimodal, and adaptive multimodal conditions, which did not differ among themselves. Consequently, the non-cueing and auditory conditions were not considered in terms of designation time, and the visual cueing condition served as the principal baseline for that measure.; In addition to enhancing visual search performance, multimodal cueing had the added benefits of reducing excessive head motion and of lowering pilots' workload by approximately 30% in comparison to the case in which no cueing was available.; The present investigation revealed no advantage for presenting multimodal information adaptively over presenting it in a fixed format; the benefits associated with multimodal information were identical in both fixed and adaptive formats. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
