Multimodal Displays for Target Localization in a Flight Test

This study evaluated the role of adaptive cueing interfaces as a means of integrating visual and auditory displays for target designation and was conducted at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Synthesized Immersion Research Environment (SIRE) facility. Twelve pilots with a mean of 2652 flight hours performed a simulated flight task in which they were instructed to maintain a prescribed flight path, air speed, and altitude. Pilots visually searched out- the-window for ground and air targets. Seven target-location cueing conditions were employed which featured spatialized auditory, visual, non-adaptive multimodal, and adaptive multimodal display configurations. Designation accuracy was poorest in the non-cueing and spatialized auditory display conditions in comparison to the other display configurations. The addition of spatialized sound to visual cueing reduced target designation time in comparison to the visual cue alone in some conditions, and the time advantage form multimodal cueing was approximately 825 msec. Multimodal cueing also reduced head motion and lowered pilots' workload by approximately 30%. This study suggests that multimodal cueing may effectively aid target localization in tactical aviation and revealed no advantage or disadvantage 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.Air Force Research Lab Wright-Patterson AFB OH Human Effectiveness Directorate is the author of 'Multimodal Displays for Target Localization in a Flight Test', published 2001 under ISBN 9781423550501 and ISBN 1423550501.