Development of the Situation Awareness Flight Training and Simulation Evaluation (SAFTE) System: II: Final Development, Initial Test, and Documentation of the System

摘要

A technology has been developed for incorporating situation awareness (SA) measures into an inexpensive flight simulator. In this Phase 2 report, the final configuration of the simulator is described in detail, the first demonstration project to determine its training and psychometric characteristics is documented, and extensive hardware/software descriptions are provided. This Situation Awareness Flight Trainer Evaluator (SAFTE) system permits an experimenter to present operationally relevant portions of aircraft missions in a laboratory desktop environment, while obtaining measures of the operator's SA embedded within the simulation. Measures of SA include spatial disorientation, awareness of aircraft present and predicted position, and several experimental metrics. In addition to the initial development, a modified SAFTE system was implemented into a human centrifuge at Brooks AFB to assess the impact of acceleration forces on pilot performance, and this development is described. Conclusions and recommendations concerning the further evolution of the SAFTE system include an assessment of the experimental SA metrics, addition of skill measures other than SA, and an evaluation of the value of this type of training for novice pilots.