Effect of Level of Automation on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Routing Task

Abstract

Supervisory control of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) raises many issues concerning the balance of system autonomy with human interaction for optimal operator situation awareness and system performance. A UAV simulation environment designed to manipulate the application of automation was used to evaluate participants' performance on routing tasks under three levels of automation. Trials also involved completion of several mission-related secondary tasks as participants supervised either one or three UAVs. Both objective and subjective data were collected. The results showed that participants took longer to complete the routing task when automation was high due to the time they spent verifying the accuracy of the imperfect decision aid. These results show the importance of designing an interface that provides an efficient means of interacting with the automation and communicates the automation's rationale, especially under high automation levels.