Trust and Situational Awareness in Augmented Reality Soldier Training

Former Defense Secretary Mattis stated that he wants infantry to “fight 25 bloodless battles” before they ever face real life-or-death combat.  The key to fighting these bloodless battles is in ensuring that they represent real battles well enough that Operators benefit from this training. Given the number of USAF personnel in Security Forces, Air Support Operations and other ground roles, and the number of “bloodless battles” that will need to be fought, the Air Force is transitioning to providing these battles via augmented and mixed reality. It is simply too expensive to hire actors or use other Airmen as enemy combatants or friendly troops in a training scenario for all of these battles. Augmented reality (AR) is already beginning to play a large role in training Soldiers and Airmen. The Army will invest almost $2B in its Integrated Visual Augmentation Systems, or IVAS, program. The Air Force is moving to augmented reality to train its special warfare operators, due to the extremely challenging job they have to perform. Key to these training systems is providing avatars and imagery that is realistic, so that trainees feel like they are part of a real mission when they are training.   One of the key attributes of these avatars, either virtual or constructive, is that they are believable. Unfortunately, augmented reality (AR) systems are not perfect. The imagery they create does not look exactly like objects in the real world, the information they present may not be 100% accurate, and anomalies like tracker errors, lack of opacity, and reduced field of view can make Soldiers feel like the AR system is not believable. If this lack of belief or trust manifests itself as Airmen interacting with the avatars or overlays in a different manner than they would in the real world, negative training occurs, which is very undesirable. What is necessary is a way to evaluate the different shortcomings of AR systems to see how or if they impact Operators’ trust in the training system. With the DOD spending almost $5B in 2020 on training and simulation, it is important to ensure that they money is well spent on effective training, and if Airmen do not trust the system they are being trained with, USAF training funds will not be well-spent. We propose an experimentation capability to investigate trust, reliance, and human task performance in an augmented reality three-dimensional experimental scenario. Specifically, we propose a methodology, in which simulated real (complex) entities are supplemented by abstracted (basic) cues presented as overlays in an AR helmet mounted display (HMD) in a visual search and awareness task. We will simulate properties of different AR displays so that we can determine which of the properties most effect training efficacy. Results from our experiment will feed directly into USAF programs in AR and will help increase the efficacy of Airmen training.