AvantGuard: An Instrument to Explore Autonomy

AvantGuard is a human factors research testbed developed with game technology and game concepts. It is used to study the effects of autonomy on a single operator supervising multiple unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs. The synthetic task environment presents a fly-ahead convoy protection mission. Adversaries hide in the urban environment and prepare to attack. Using an innovative control interface, the operator directs the UAVs, studies their sensor streams, assesses danger and guides the convoy. AvantGuard provides a complex environment centered on four tasks threat surveillance, threat detection, threat assessment, and threat avoidance. The level of autonomy LOA of each task is set independently from a broad range. The lowest autonomy levels demand full human attention. Middle levels offer limited operator intervention. The highest levels are fully automated, performed without the awareness of the operator. An interactive tool enables the researcher to sculpt autonomy profiles for comparative studies. A scenario development kit offers access to the synthetic environment. Each game-like session yields analytic performance metrics.