Ground Control Stations (GCS) come
in many different sizes and shapes. The DJI Company, who is one of the largest
commercial UAS makers, often relies on smart phones, tablets, and laptop
computers to function as GCSs for their most capable UASs (DJI, 2016). Larger
UASs that are used by the Military tend to have much more complex and intricate
GCSs that provide multiple positions for multiple crew members. The one GCS
that stands out due to both its complexity and its uniqueness is the GCS of the
MQ-5B Hunter UAS, which was operated by the US Army, and still operated by the
Department of Defense. The Hunter’s GCS was officially called the GCS-3000 and
was designed and built by Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd (Armytechnology.com.
2016). The unique aspect of this UAS is that it needed to be manually launched
and recovered via a separate GCS called the Launch and Recovery Station (LRS).
This was a GCS with the same power generation requirements, antenna
requirements, and crew requirements as the inflight GCS, but it had a 100 foot
cable that connected a hand held remote control that was used by an external
operator (EO) to launch and land the aircraft. The EO would need to stand mid
field directly adjacent to the runway in order to conduct the launch and
recovery which was very dangerous, and caused major delays in airfield
operations (Armytechnology.com. 2016).
When
analyzing the functional operation of the GCS-3000, an in-depth analysis of the
launch and recovery process and remote control provides a strong example of a
system that was designed with minimal though into human factors. The EO would
have to stand parallel to the runway and use a small remote that was similar to
a model airplane remote to control the aircraft. The aircraft would land and
need to catch arresting cables in order to make a safe and secure stop due to
the fact that the aircraft did not have a steerable nose wheel
(Armytechnology.com, 2016).
The first major human factor issue was
that the pilot could not concentrate on the controls while observing the
aircraft at the same time.
Figure 1:
External Operators are conducting launch and recovery of the MQ-5B Hunter via
the EO Remote. Retrieved from: http://www.northropgrumman.com/Photos/pgM_HU-40005_002.jpg
In
figure 1, the EOs are unable to maintain aircraft observation and controller observation
at the same time. The controller had a very simple stick style that did not
differentiate the different control inputs. This caused many issues due to the
fact that EOs could not look down during the launch and recovery sequence. Without tactile cues to ensure the proper control
sticks were being manipulated, the chances of human error due to inadvertent
switch manipulations were increased (Cooke, Rowe, Bennett, & Joralmon
2017).
The second major issues is that
during recovery and landing, the EO would observe the aircraft from the front
as it was approaching him and then the aircraft would actually pass the EO and
the perspective would transition to looking at the rear of the aircraft. The
rapid switch in perspective would also cause the EO to have to alter his
control inputs. When the aircraft is approaching the EO would use reverse
control inputs, but when looking at the rear of the aircraft, normal control
inputs would be needed. This quick transition between perspectives at the final
moments of landing caused many EOs to either not make it successfully through
the EO training, or actually cause mishaps in the operational force (Cooke,
Rowe, Bennett, & Joralmon 2017).
The two factors mentioned above were
both related to the fact that the system needed to be landed manually. From
2012 till today, Northrop Grumman has worked to fully automate the landing
process for the MQ-5B (Northrop Grumman, 2016). The transition to more
autonomous control and landing is the main mitigating solution to these human
factor hurtles. The issue associated with the tactile feel of the remote
control does correlate to manned aviation. When pilot workload is high, it’s
hard for the pilots to look at every single switch every time it needs to be
manipulated. In manned aviation, most cockpits ensure switch placement, shape
and size correlate to what the switch does. The best examples of this is that
in a cockpit, the landing gear switch is usually round like a wheel and the flaps
switch is usually shaped like an airfoil. These tactile expressions of what the
switches do help the pilots reduce the probability of inadvertently flipping
the wrong switch during high workload situations (DVI Aviation, n.d.).
References
ArmyTechnology.com.
(2016). Hunter RQ-5A / MQ-5B/C UAV. Retrieved November 29, 2016, from
http://www.army-technology.com/projects/hunter/
Cooke,
N. J., Rowe, L. J., Bennett, W., & Joralmon, D. Q. (2017). Remotely
piloted aircraft systems: A human systems integration perspective.
Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons.
DJI
Inc. (2016). Your first stop for DJI drones and camera technologies | DJI
Store. Retrieved November 29, 2016, from http://store.dji.com/
DVI Aviation. (n.d.). Aircraft
Cockpit Design Experts. Retrieved November 29, 2016, from http://www.dviaviation.com/aircraft-cockpit-design.html
Northrop Grumman. (2016). MQ5B
Hunter. Retrieved November 29, 2016, from
http://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/MQ5BHunter/Pages/default.aspx
No comments:
Post a Comment