Pioneering Architecture for Tablet ELectronic Kneeboard Applications (PATELLA)

SoarTech proposes to design PATELLA, an electronic kneeboard (EKB) solution for Navy pilots. Built from the ground-up to address the human factors issues that pilots face in the flight environment, PATELLA consists of a data-sharing system and accompanying software design specification that will overcome limitations in current electronic kneeboard technologies through two key innovations. First, PATELLA follows a cognitively-inspired design process for EKB apps. This process lays out requirements for advanced software widgets that suit the workflow of F/A-18 pilots. Second, PATELLAs centralized data-sharing systemwhich is a locally-executing, standalone tablet applicationwill allow PATELLA-compliant apps to share information. This allows PATELLA apps to request user-provided information from other apps in order to provide intelligent defaults to the pilot and reduce the number of interactions needed. With these two innovations, PATELLA will provide the Navy with a powerful, unified design for implementing intelligent apps on the EKB. This enables PATELLA to reduce the pilots interaction time with EKB apps, which in turn decreases the loss of situational awareness that accompanies the heads-down use of current EKB solutions.