The Universal Ground Control Station (UGCS) is slated to be the
new GCS for all U.S. Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). It will be replacing the One System Ground
Control Station (OSGCS) and is supposed to bring significant improvements. Both of these GCSs are portable and come on
the back of an LMTV (Light to Medium family of Tactical Vehicles) for mobility
considerations. While the UGCS is
advertised as an improvement over the OSGCS in reality there is very little
real improvement and in many critical areas it is actually a step backwards
from the OSGCS. Figure 1 shows the UGCS
control stations as implemented in the UGCS simulator which is identical to the
control stations in the actual GCS.
GCS human factors issues have been an ongoing issue with Army UAS
that will hopefully be fixed in the future with an institutional change of
mindset. “It appears that some military
unmanned aircraft have been rushed into service, with GCS interfaces that
violate established basic design principles.” (Salas & Maurino, 2010, p. 518)
Operator Controls
One of the major issues that were identified as needing to be
improved on the OSGCS were the physical control inputs for the operator. Many of the controls such as the joystick
used for payload control at the Payload Operator (PO) station and for taxiing
the aircraft from the Aircraft Operator (AO) station was taken directly from
existing RQ-7B Shadow GCS. This joystick
was a point of contention with the Shadow GCS and it was not understood why it
was used in the OSGCS. This joystick was
even more unsuitable for taxiing the 3200 lbs. aircraft and it created major
safety concerns and requires the aircraft to be taxied at slower than normal
speeds for safe operation. While the new
joystick in the UGCS is superficially different it is functionally the same as
the OSGCS joystick with all of its inadequacies.
There are other control issues such as the layout for weapons
engagement. Instead of being easily
accessible which would allow quick and efficient weapons employment the
controls are spread out between both the AO and PO stations and require not
only physical button presses and joystick inputs but software menu navigation
and selection is also required. This is
an extremely cumbersome and unnecessarily difficult operation and it is obvious
that no human factors considerations were used in the design of these GCS
controls. This problem is present
in the OSGCS and is virtually unchanged
in the UGCS.
Probably the most egregious change in the UGCS is removal of the
trackball control for menu navigation and replacing it with a pressure
sensitive button mouse that is universally disliked. This same mouse configuration was used on a
secondary computer in the OSGCS and all the operators of the aircraft had
difficulty with this input device. This
input device is highly inaccurate and will greatly slow down menu navigation
and will slow operations a great deal.
This will manifest itself even more dramatically during weapons
engagement scenarios with high workloads and operator stress.
While these issues are the largest control problems with the UGCS
there are many more that have not been talked about here. Overall while there are some superficial
improvements the UGCS is in the most important ways a step backwards. Figure 2 shows a close-up of the UGCS
operator control station. There will be
three control stations in the UGCS, all of them identical.
Visual DisplaysWhile the visual displays in the OSGCS were far from perfect they
are in my opinion preferable to the new displays in the UGCS. While the OSGCS had two flat panel displays
per control station with the primary display on the right side with all
critical flight information and the support display on the left with secondary
display information and support programs.
Some of the problems with these displays are that they are not high
definition (HD) displays and with relatively low resolution monitors the
payload imagery was affected. While HD
quality payloads are available for the MQ-1C Gray Eagle putting them on the
aircraft would be pointless since the display monitors are not HD capable. The current implementation of the UGCS does
not have HD capable monitors either and so continues to limit the payload
capabilities which is unacceptable in today’s market with extremely cheap and
readily available HD monitors.
The UGCS has one large flat panel display that all flight
information and secondary programs will on at the same time. Figure 1 shows the display layout of the
UGCS. This makes the screen much more
cluttered and difficult to find critical information when needed. There may also be a human factors
standardization issue since individual operators will arrange the windows and
displays to their preference instead of having one standard layout. One feature that the operators have been
asking for and which was not implemented on the UGCS displays is the ability to
have touchscreen monitors. This would
allow the operator to have the option to move displays or select targets and
flight paths by touching the map display or desired window. This capability has been utilized on other
UAS platforms and why it was not implemented in the UGCS is unknown.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The UGCS is not a significant improvement over the OSGCS and in
many critical factors such as the control inputs and visual displays it is in
fact a step backwards. The physical
controls have not alleviated the human factors issues that the OSGCS currently
has and with the menu navigation input device the UGCS is much less user
friendly and efficient than the OSGCS.
While it is understandable that the Army wants to have a common GCS for
its UAS to lower cost and keep a smaller logistics footprint it must be done in
a manner that does not affect mission effectiveness. One possible solution would be to go with a
modular GCS such as Raytheon’s Common Ground Control Station (CGCS).
The Army needs to take human factors much more seriously in their
GCS designs. “The fundamental concept
underlying HSI is the consideration of the human element in all aspects of a
system’s life-cycle so as to reduce resource utilization and system costs from
inefficiency while dramatically increasing system performance and productivity”
(Barnhart, Hottman, Marshall, &
Shappee, 2012, p. 173) More direct input from the UAS operators needs to be
taken into consideration to help alleviate these problems before the system
design is finalized. We currently had a
human factors session concerning our Synthetic Aperture Radar software
interface and the team did an excellent job of taking operator inputs and ideas
for consideration in the software design.
This same approach needs to be taken in all design elements that have human
factors implications. Hopefully the Army
will continue along this path and we will see future improvements.
References
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