Metacognition, Hardiness, and Grit as Resilience Factors in Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Operations: A Simulation Study.

Operators of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) face a variety of stress factors resulting from both the cognitive demands of the work and its broader social context. Dysfunctional metacognitions including those concerning worry may increase stress vulnerability, whereas personality traits including hardiness and grit may confer resilience. The present study utilized a simulation of UAS operation requiring control of multiple vehicles.

Enhancing the effectiveness of human-robot teaming with a closed-loop system.

With technological developments in robotics and their increasing deployment, human-robot teams are set to be a mainstay in the future. To develop robots that possess teaming capabilities, such as being able to communicate implicitly, the present study implemented a closed-loop system. This system enabled the robot to provide adaptive aid without the need for explicit commands from the human teammate, through the use of multiple physiological workload measures.

Impact of three task demand factors on simulated unmanned system intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations.

The present study investigated how three task demand factors influenced performance, subjective workload and stress of novice intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operators within a simulation of an unmanned ground vehicle. Manipulations were task type, dual-tasking and event rate. Participants were required to discriminate human targets within a street scene from a direct video feed (threat detection [TD] task) and detect changes in symbols presented in a map display (change detection [CD] task).

Toward a tactile language for human-robot interaction: two studies of tacton learning and performance.

Objective: Two experiments were performed to investigate the feasibility for robot-to-human communication of a tactile language using a lexicon of standardized tactons (tactile icons) within a sentence.

Background: Improvements in autonomous systems technology and a growing demand within military operations are spurring interest in communication via vibrotactile displays. Tactile communication may become an important element of human-robot interaction (HRI), but it requires the development of messaging capabilities approaching the communication power of the speech and visual signals used in the military.

The psychometrics of mental workload: multiple measures are sensitive but divergent.

Objective: A study was run to test the sensitivity of multiple workload indices to the differing cognitive demands of four military monitoring task scenarios and to investigate relationships between indices.

Background: Various psychophysiological indices of mental workload exhibit sensitivity to task factors. However, the psychometric properties of multiple indices, including the extent to which they intercorrelate, have not been adequately investigated.

Methodological lessons in neurophenomenology: Review of a baseline study and recommendations for research approaches.

Neurophenomenological (NP) methods integrate objective and subjective data in ways that retain the statistical power of established disciplines (like cognitive science) while embracing the value of first-person reports of experience. The present paper positions neurophenomenology as an approach that pulls from traditions of cognitive science but includes techniques that are challenging for cognitive science in some ways. A baseline study is reviewed for "lessons learned," that is, the potential methodological improvements that will support advancements in understanding consciousness and cognition using neurophenomenology.

Task engagement, cerebral blood flow velocity, and diagnostic monitoring for sustained attention.

Loss of vigilance may lead to impaired performance in various applied settings including military operations, transportation, and industrial inspection. Individuals differ considerably in sustained attention, but individual differences in vigilance have proven to be hard to predict. The dependence of vigilance on workload factors is consistent with a resource model of sustained attention.