Study of Symbology for Automated Graphic Displays.

The primary purpose of this report is to describe the current status of symbology development for use in interactive graphic display systems such as the Command and Control Interactive Display Experimentation System CCIDES. A secondary purpose is to examine user requirements for such systems when employed as a part of a Tactical Operations System TOS. An extensive literature survey indicated a great variety of available alternative symbology formats. Before a specific format is selected, the necessary information requirements for a particular position must be determined. For Army tactical displays, this information should be gathered in experiments using realistic battle scenarios. As a related effort, alternative symbol formats were evaluated by civilians. Naive subjects generally preferred a pictorial symbol over traditional military alternatives. The report is written for a military audience.