Mitigating the Costs of Spatial Transformations With a Situation Awareness Augmented Reality Display: Assistance for the Joint Terminal Attack Controller 3-17

Wickens, Christopher D.; Mifsud, Domenick; Rodriguez, Richard; Ortega, Francisco R. · 2021 · Human Factors The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

DOI: 10.1177/00187208211022468

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Summary

This study addresses the cognitive and perceptual challenges faced by Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs) when coordinating close air support. JTACs must verbally describe the spatial relationships of objects in a target zone to pilots, a task complicated by two factors: visual compression caused by low viewing slant angles and the mental rotation required to align non-northerly viewpoints with a world-referenced frame. The authors aimed to evaluate whether an Augmented Reality (AR) display, specifically an Instance Situation Awareness (ISA) system, could mitigate these costs by providing a top-down, north-up view of the target area. The experiment utilized a virtual reality (VR) simulation involving 40 participants, including Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) cadets and non-cadets. Participants viewed a scene containing four objects from either a 10° or 20° slant angle and from four cardinal orientations (North, East, South, West). They performed a spatial judgment task, selecting the correct description of object relationships from four options. The study employed a mixed-design with two within-subject variables (display modality: unaided control vs. ISA-assisted; and facing direction) and between-subject variables (slant angle and participant cohort). The ISA display provided a 90° elevation, north-up perspective, theoretically eliminating compression and mental rotation demands. Results demonstrated significant benefits of the ISA display. Response times were reduced by approximately 8 seconds on average compared to the control condition. The advantage was most pronounced in non-northerly orientations, where the ISA eliminated the time costs associated with mental rotation; in the control condition, response times increased significantly as the viewing angle deviated from North, whereas ISA users maintained consistent speeds regardless of orientation. Regarding accuracy, the ISA display significantly improved performance, particularly in the 10° slant angle condition. The control condition suffered a notable accuracy drop at the 10° angle due to visual compression, a deficit that was almost entirely eliminated by the ISA aid. The accuracy improvements aligned with geometric models predicting compression effects, suggesting the display compensated for perceptual distortions that could not be overcome by additional time. The findings indicate that AR-supported situation awareness displays provide substantial operational benefits for ground-air communication tasks. By removing the cognitive load of mental rotation and the perceptual errors caused by visual compression, the ISA display enhances both the speed and accuracy of spatial judgments. The study concludes that such technologies can significantly improve the efficiency of critical military tasks, such as target correlation, and suggests that the benefits of reducing spatial transformation costs scale effectively to realistic, high-stress environments.

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