Using perspective guidance overlay to improve UAV manual control performance

The guidance information that is available to the UAV operator typically suffers from limitations of data update rate and system latency. Even when using a flight director command display, the manual control task is considerably more difficult compared to piloting a manned aircraft. Results from earlier research into perspective guidance displays show that these displays provide performance benefits and suggest a reduction of the negative effects of system latency. The current study has shown that in case of limitations of data update rate and system latency the use of a conformal sensor overlay showing a perspective presentation of the trajectory constraints is consistently superior to the flight director command display. The superiority becomes more pronounced with an increase in data latency and a decrease in update rate. The fact that the perspective pathway overlay as used in this study can be implemented on any graphics system that is capable of rendering a set of 2-D vectors makes it a viable candidate for upgrades to current systems.