Multimodal Interface Toolkit for UAV Systems (MITUS)

Because many future Army missions will increasingly rely on the performance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in challenging operational environments, there is a need for novel human-system interfaces that improve the likelihood of mission success. We propose to iteratively design, develop, and evaluate such interfaces using a Multimodal Interface Toolkit for UAV Systems (MITUS). In Phase I, we demonstrated the feasibility of our approach to interface development, first performing a targeted cognitive task analysis (CTA) of UAV operators to identify representative demands and complexities. We prototyped an integrated, reconfigurable software and hardware toolkit for prototyping and evaluating multimodal interface designs, and demonstrated its capabilities. We also developed an evaluation methodology and associated metrics. Under Phase II, we propose a full-scope effort to develop and evaluate UAV interfaces with MITUS. First, we will expand the CTA to deepen our understanding of specific platforms and missions. Next, we will refine our toolkit to fully support prototyping multimodal interface techniques and evaluating them in a simulation environment. Then, we will execute the evaluation plan developed under Phase I. Finally, we will identify and pursue Phase III transition and commercialization opportunities for the resulting human-system interface.