Crew Performance and Situation Awareness in Three UAS GCS Layouts

The aim of Canada's Joint Unmanned Surveillance and Target Acquisition System program is to acquire an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) for Royal Canadian Air Force's domestic and international operations. This UAS will be capable of complementing existing reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition, and engagement capabilities. Defence Research and Development Canada has developed a UAS ground control station simulator to investigate crew layouts, airworthiness certification, UAS crew training technologies and strategies, as well as novel human-machine interfaces. This paper investigates crew performance and situation awareness in three layouts of the ground control station: distributed, classroom, and boardroom. Preliminary results indicate that the boardroom layout outperforms the other layouts in terms of crew communication, teamwork and situation awareness.