Control of Multiple-UAVs: A Workload Analysis

Abstract

Fifty-four licensed pilots carried out multiple surveillance missions on two high-fidelity simulations representing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). In Experiment 1, pilots were required to operate a single UAV through three different mission conditions: a baseline condition, one that offloaded relevant information to the auditory channel, and one that provided automation of flight path control. In Experiment 2, pilots operated two UAVs simultaneously through the same three mission conditions. Pilots were responsible for the following tasks: (1) mission completion, (2) target search, and (3) systems monitoring. Results of the experiment suggest that automation and auditory offloading can be beneficial to performance by reducing interference between tasks, and thus alleviating overall workload.