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Introduction to UAS Human Factors

When people used to think of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in the past few decades, military drones and expensive cinematic drones for movies came to mind.  Nowadays, there is a far greater access to UAS across the civilian sector.  People can order small UAS from Amazon and other large box stores and learn to fly them.   With easier access comes higher potential for risk.  A risk-adverse society fears the potential of UAS crashing into manned aircraft or populated areas on the ground (Clothier, R.A., Greer, D.A., Greer, D.G., & Mehta, A.M., p. 1168).  This risk perception is the “physical signals and/or information about potential hazards and risks associated with technology and the formation of judgement about the seriousness, likelihood, and acceptability” (Clothier et. al, p. 1168).  These risks have a deep connection with Human Factors that can be both positive and negative.

When there are positive human factors with UAS, there are less errors due to confusion and a higher probability of mission success (Howe, S., p. 3).  This is necessary for future advancements in the UAS field.  Human factors is the multidisciplinary study of human capabilities and limitations that in this case are applied to systems, equipment, and environments for the ideal human performance (Howe, S., p. 5).    When developing new technology, it is important to focus not only on the machine, but on the human who will be interacting with it. This allows the machine design to be the most successful it can be. 

Since UAS and human interaction has not been thoroughly studied since it is a newer field, there are also some deficiencies.  There are still many limitations on See & Avoid capabilities.  This requires the user to focus a lot of effort on ensuring the UAS does not impact another object or person.  There is also a lack of standardizations in the design world for UAS.  This makes it more difficult to improve upon designs.  Fatigue in the human operator can also occur, if the data being received is overwhelming and unhelpful. 

It is important to focus studies on how humans and UAS interact.  Throughout the rest of this ASCI 638 class, I will continue to do more research so I can better understand the UAS and human relationship.  I believe as more people have access to UAS it is even more important that better regulations and training is put out to the public to avoid potentially catastrophic accidents with unregulated civilian UAS.

 

References:

Clothier, R. A., Greer, D. A., Greer, D. G., & Mehta, A. M. (2015). Risk perception and the public acceptance of drones. Risk Analysis, 35(6), 1167-1183. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12330

Howe, Scott.  (2017). The Leading Human Factors Deficiencies in Unmanned Aircraft Systems. NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center.  NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Marshall, D. M. (2016). Introduction to unmanned aircraft systems (Second ed.). CRC Press.

 

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