Evaluating the Use of Auditory Systems to Improve Performance in Combat Search and Rescue.

摘要

A critical success factor for pararescue jumpers (PJs) executing combat search and rescue (CSAR) missions is maintaining situational awareness while navigating through unfamiliar terrain, mitigating threats to both the PJs and their target, and monitoring the location of team members during a mission. To meet these challenges, PJs use different technologies, such as specialized video displays. This study continues research to explore the potential for 3D (spatialized) audio displays to enhance performance. With this technology, digital signal processing is used to modify sounds so that, even though they are delivered through headphones, they are perceived to come from specified locations in the external environment around the listener, for example marking the location of a team member, a threat, or a significant landmark. This technology was evaluated in three experimental tasks conducted in an integrated virtual platform (IVP), a two-site distributed virtual environment that is described in the report. The first task found that subjects using personalized audio profiles were able to localize sounds presented in the IVP, but their performance was not as accurate as that observed in the Auditory Localization Facility (ALF) used by the Battlefield Acoustics Branch (RHCB) located at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. The second task found that subjects were able to locate and respond to a threat (sniper) while travelling in a convoy through a representative urban terrain more rapidly when aided by a 3D audio display versus two non-spatial auditory displays. The third task required two subjects to find each other in an urban terrain. They were able to rendezvous more rapidly when they talked to each other through a spatialized communication channel that made their voices appear to arise from their actual location in the terrain than when they used a normal monaural communication channel.