SBIR-STTR Award

EW operators are increasingly flooded with information, including alert messages on a wide variety of topics, such as system status, system faults, situation reports, and target status. Staying abreast of these frequent alerts can cause operator error, fatigue, distraction from important duties, missed messages, and impaired situation awareness. Appropriately presenting alerts in the EW operators human-machine interface is a balancing act between necessary notification and unwanted distraction. Pacific Science & Engineering will develop automated methods to determine alert priorities for EW operators and then style the presentation of that alert appropriately to alert, inform, or log for future attention. Alert prioritization depends on several dynamic situational factors, including current mission requirements, the operators immediate tasking, the content and relevance of an alert, and operator current workload. Further, the system should continue to monitor alert status to ensure that alerts are appropriately addressed by the operator, as time and operational context allows. This requirement for sophisticated alert presentation and monitoring is critical for EW systems, and it is equally critical for related systems and display consoles, as well. Applying consistent methods for alert monitoring, prioritization, and presentation will make the entire suite of EW systems easier to use, manage, and train.

Benefit:
The alert prioritization, presentation, and monitoring methods to be developed by this SBIR will have significant benefits to the DoD, given the critical, time-sensitive nature of military operations and the need for system operators to maintain high levels of situation awareness for effective and efficient task performance. Transition of PSEs HMI designs for IWS 2.0s EW systems is on-going, and transition of the alerting prioritization scheme developed here will follow that existing path. PSEs first HMI design from the EW Roadmap, the First Themed Capability Release (TCR1), is already being implemented by Lockheed Martin, Syracuse. Additionally, a Phase III SBIR contract with NAVSEA PEO-IWS 2.0 is pending, and anticipated to start in mid-2021 to continue and extend support to the implementation of PSEs Digital Operational Log (OpLog) HMI (the second Themed Capability Release in the EW Roadmap). The alerting prioritization scheme developed here, and then matured through a Phase II SBIR, would transition (a) through expression in a revision of the EW HMI style guide, and (b) through implementation by a suitable OEM with PSE support to that implementation via the Phase III contract. Finally, the general alarm system schema developed by this SBIR can be transitioned to many military technological systems that use alerts to assist system operators and maintainers in detecting and responding appropriately to significant operational events and system anomalies. The alerting prioritization algorithm will also provide substantial benefits in a number of commercial domains. PSE foresees commercialization potential for this SBIR by applying the alerting prioritization algorithm process to commercial HMI systems that PSE already supports, including power system grid management and industrial process control. PSE is currently working with a utility company to redesign HMIs that are used for making rapid grid management decisions. As with military EW systems, managing a power grid requires operators to heed and respond to a wide range of alerts and alert priorities, making this domain a strong candidate for transition of this SBIR. PSE would commercialize the alerting algorithm and HMI alerting scheme to meet the requirements of that utility companys HMI suites. Process control is another commercial application that can benefit from this SBIR. The number and range of alerts in process control is constantly increasing and needs sophisticated methods for alert prioritization, presentation, and monitoring. PSE has a strong working relationship with Emerson Process Management of Austin, Texas, and will work with Emerson to transition the alerting prioritization algorithm and scheme developed here to their process control HMIs.

Keywords:
Human-Machine Interface, Human-Machine Interface, Contextual Alert, Alert Monitoring, Automated Alert, User-centered Design, Situation Awareness, Alert Prioritization Algorithm, Electronic Warfare

United States Navy Electronic Warfare personnel who stand watch in surface ship combat information centers are critical for ensuring the Fleets safety, situation awareness, and mission effectiveness. Over long watches and across widely varying operational contexts, Electronic Warfare watchstanders must monitor sensor information provided by several systems to rapidly detect and report important threats. However, Electronic Warfare operators are increasingly flooded with information, including alert messages on a wide variety of topics, such as system status, system faults, situation reports, and target status. This requires watchstanders to allocate limited attention across a wide array of displays while analyzing sensor observations and reporting key events. Staying on top of these frequent alerts can cause operator error, fatigue, distraction from important duties, missed messages, and impaired situation awareness. Appropriately presenting alerts in the Electronic Warfare operators human-machine interface is a balancing act between necessary notification and unwanted distraction. An effective alerting scheme is needed to help watchstanders identify new sensor information across signal sources and focus on possible threats amongst those signals. However, every additional system adds its own alerting schema to which watchstanders must attend, analyze, and report. Given the rapidly proliferating number of these systems, watchstanders are being increasingly challenged to respond in an appropriate and timely manner to the alerts associated with each of those inconsistent systems. This situation can result in watchstanders incorrectly prioritizing their effort, confusion from inconsistent presentation, inefficient task workarounds, and the need for additional training on each systems alerting scheme. Thus, alerting systems that may have once been viable are now being pushed past their breaking point. To be successful in a complex environment, alerting systems need a careful application of human factors with a focus on human perception and cognition. This project will research, design, implement a prototype of, and document an alerting system to meet the needs of Electronic Warfare Operators. Sophisticated alert presentation and monitoring is critical for Electronic Warfare systems, and it is equally critical for related systems and display consoles, as well. Applying consistent methods for alert monitoring, prioritization, and presentation will make the entire suite of Electronic Warfare systems easier to use, manage, and train.

Benefit:
The alerting system being developed on this project is targeted toward transition to a specific Department of the Navy Program of Record. There are multiple commercialization opportunities outside the Department of Defense. Alerting systems and associated human machine interfaces are utilized in many industries and enterprise systems for both monitoring normal operations and managing emergencies. Many electric utility control rooms, industrial process control, air traffic control, health monitoring, and financial displays require robust and consistent alerting systems for human operators to manage large amounts of status information. The innovations of this project, obtained through careful consideration of the human end user, can be applied to develop alerting systems that are more consistent, intuitive, and actionable than systems presently in use improving measures of whole system performance across many commercial applications.

Keywords:
Human Machine Interface, human systems, Electronic Warfare, Artificial Intelligence, Human Factors, displays, Alerting, Sensors