2005-2006 Assessment of the Army Research Laboratory (2007) / Chapter Skim
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3 Human Research and Engineering Directorate
3 Human Research and Engineering Directorate
Pages 19-30
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From page 19... ...
The Soldier Performance Division conducts a broad program of soldiercentered basic and applied scientific research and technology development, directed toward maximizing battlefield effectiveness. The Human Factors Integration Division conducts analyses and applied studies to ensure that soldier performance requirements are adequately considered in technology development and system design.
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From page 20... ...
Studies have now been conducted to assess factors affecting control performance and situation awareness, operator performance and workload relative to the number and types of assets controlled, and the effects of team size on robot controller performance. Continuing improvements were observed in the quality of, and the rationale for, experimental designs employed by the HRED researchers.
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From page 21... ...
The Board recommends experimental designs in which head movements are measured during signal localization, and analyses that address the extent to which degree and type of head movements predict variations in responses. The Board believes that the measurement of head movements would be relatively easy and inexpensive to implement.
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From page 22... ...
of the Communications and Electronics Command to provide 24-hour mobility vision for dismounted soldiers. The goal is to provide adequate situation awareness, target detection, and obstacle avoidance when traversing field and urban terrain on foot.
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From page 23... ...
HRED research projects do produce data that readily can be transformed into a relevant set of human factors needs and design recommendations and, in turn, into recommended designs or design modifications. It is the view of the Board that the ultimate impact of human factors research may be considerably greater if HRED actually took the next step, when appropriate, and generated model design specifications and design exemplars as products of its efforts.
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From page 24... ...
peer reviews of research objectives and of the methods proposed for the conduct and analysis of research projects. Such a practice would leverage the considerable expertise of senior scientists and, hopefully, lead to the development of better theoretical constructs, the formulation of more appropriate research hypotheses, and the construction of more powerful experimental designs and statistical analyses to better support the resulting assertions and conclusions.
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From page 25... ...
Designing the studies so that regression analysis is also possible may provide results in a more usable form that would reveal graded effects of varying design parameters. Other avenues to deeper analysis include process tracing techniques to better understand underlying strategies, defining key aspects of situation awareness necessary for mission success, analyzing and displaying variance to better understand measurement reliability and causes of performance outliers, and further assessing experimental results by comparing them with other studies completed under comparable conditions.
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From page 26... ...
Currently, these efforts are directed toward using modeling tools to identify potential high-workload and multimodal interface task combinations for soldiers operating military ground vehicles (e.g., to identify crew-size requirements) and robotic assets, and they are being conducted in collaboration with the program of research on robotics.
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From page 27... ...
Because of the importance to the Army of having trained personnel available in its critical specialties, the macro-ergonomic approach taken by HRED to reducing attrition during highly demanding military training is a significant contribution to the Army's needs. The study demonstrated HRED recognition of a significant military problem and also demonstrated the challenge of addressing complex problems to accommodate immediate demands while also working toward a systemic solution.
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From page 28... ...
The research program on the modeling of visual search tasks has involved the participation of researchers beyond HRED and is designed to make contributions to the broader modeling community, particularly those involved with modeling efforts that have come to be known as ACT-R. In the conduct of a project on memory for unattended information during visual search, data were obtained for the research from Harvard Medical School, researchers at Rice University contributed to the design of the search task, and a postdoctoral student (now a permanent employee at HRED)
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From page 29... ...
The HRED researchers are cognizant of the need for verification and validation, the need to relate their programs to those of others, and the extent of collaboration required to meet their objectives. The recently initiated Army Technology Objective at HRED on human-robotic interaction and the amount of research now underway in this area suggest the potential importance of pursuing crosscutting issues with other researchers addressing the application of robotics in the Army.
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