SONIC Sensor Operations via Naturalistic Interactive Control

Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) requires the ability to navigate and interpret mounds of data to produce actionable decisions. The ever-changing need to incorporate new capabilities into daily operations has increased the complexity of this task in recent years. Through the ICE Box environment, AFRL is redefining a ConOps for future ISR operations and redesigning how analysts interact with ISR technologies. However, the ICE Box human-machine interface does not yet provide a"naturalistic"experience to its users. To support this need, the Aptima team proposes to develop SONIC (Sensor Operations via Naturalistic Interactive Control), a multi-modal user interaction framework optimized for use within highly immersive workspaces such as ICE Box, to provide a naturalistic way for analysts to control and receive information from remote networks of sensors. SONIC will emphasize three primary design criteria: (1) incorporating relevant human factors constructs into the interaction design framework; (2) intelligent fusion of multi-modal user inputs; and (3) integrating contextual information into the user interface. Ultimately, the objective of SONIC is to enable analysts to collaborate and provide mission support from remote locations more effectively without an increase in workload or a decrease in performance.