Building Interfaces for Operator-in-the-Loop Data Fusion (BIFOLD)

Future Army missions at the Unit of Action will rely on the ability of human and computers to fuse disparate data sources to support complex Intelligence Analysis tasks. To support the development of such systems, we propose to design, evaluate, and Build Interfaces For Operator-in-the-Loop Data Fusion (BIFOLD). Under Phase I, we demonstrated the feasibility of our approach. Specifically, we performed a cognitive task analysis (CTA) of operators using a data fusion system in a demonstration scenario to identify requirements. We prototyped an integrated, reconfigurable software toolkit for exploring different visualization and interface designs. We also developed an evaluation methodology and associated metrics. Under Phase II, we propose to develop targeted visualizations and interfaces by: (1) performing a CTA on an expanded scenario to identify operator demands across a wider set of data fusion systems; (2) developing additional visualization and interface techniques and a supporting software toolkit; (3) refining the ability of the toolkit to integrate with current and planned DoD data fusion systems; (4) executing the evaluation plan developed under Phase I; and (5) identifying and pursuing Phase III transition and commercialization opportunities for the visualizations and interfaces generated with our toolkit.