DTIC ADA281828: Geographic Knowledge Acquisition Promoted by Map Study and Rehearsal Flight Methods

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GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION PROMOTED
BY MAP STUDY AND REHEARSAL FLIGHT METHODS
BY
SCOTT THOMAS HUTCHINSON
B.S., University of Florida, 1990
THESIS
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology
in the Graduate College of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1994
Urbana, Illinois
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
THE GRADUATE COLLEGE
JANUARY 1994
WE HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS BY
SCOTT THOMAS HUTCHINSON
ENTITLED GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION PROMOTED
BY MAP STUDY AND REHEARSAL FLIGHT METHODS
BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE FEQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE
Drcr of Thesis Research
Head of Department
Committee on Final Examinationt
(Chairperson
t Required for doctor's degree but not for master's.
0.517
iii
Abstract
Three methods of pre-flight navigational preparation were
evaluated, to address problems of geographic disorientation.
Thirty pilots either "actively" flew a rehearsal of an upcoming
flight, "passively" watched a replay of an active rehearsal, or
participated in a map study session in order to "learn" a low
level navigation route and the surrounding region. Following
training, subjects were then asked to navigate along the
previously learned route in a high fidelity simulator, which
depicted environmental aspects of a "real" flight. The results
indicated that the spatial resource demands of active flight
control while navigating in the training condition overburdened
any potential learning benefits of "seeing" the training
environment. The route and survey knowledge acquired in the
active training condition were significantly poorer than the
knowledge acquired in map study and somewhat inferior to that
acquired by the passive group. All groups had equal difficulty
applying survey knowledge to an unrehearsed and unexpected
navigation task.
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iv
Acknowledgments
The following research was funded by a grant from the NASA
Ames Research Center (NASA NAG 2-308) and was made possible by a
graduate school scholarship awarded to me by the United States
Air Force Institute of Technology. The successful completion of
this project could have not been accomplished without the expert
assistance of many people. My sincere appreciation is extended
to the following: Karen Ayers and Mary Welborn for their word
processing skills, Sharon Yeakel and Jonathan Sivier for their
programming talents, and Dr. Gavan Lintern for his thorough
critique and review as second reader. Dr. Christopher Wickens,
my research advisor, was a critical asset. I frequently utilized
his valuable wisdom, guidance, and expert knowledge. His efforts
are truly appreciated. Lastly I want to thank my soon-to-be
wife, Lynn, for not putting me in the dog house when I got a
little crazy from it all. Again, thank you one and all.
V
Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . ..... . . . . . . . . ..1
Method.................................................. 23
Results................................................. 39
Discussion.............................................. 47
Figures................................................. 59
References.............................................. 67
Introduction
overview
Navigation is a critical task that is essential to pilots of
all types of aircraft. This task is generally performed by
pilots quite successfully. However, pilots occasionally make
navigation errors and these errors often result in a phenomenon
called geographical disorientation. This occurs when accurate
awareness of one's location in the world is no longer available
to the pilot. This state may simply refer to when the pilot gets
lost, whether the pilot is aware or unaware of this condition.
Battiste (1993) defines geographic orientation as awareness of
one's relationship to physical surface features of a region,
awareness of one's relative location within that region, and
one's temporal awareness of when one should be at a particular
location within that region.
Williams, Tham, and Wickens (1992) recently completed a
review of NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) data on
geographical disorientation and concluded that geographical
disorientation is most prevalent among general aviation pilots,
but that it occurs at all levels of flying experience. Williams
et al. found that geographical disorientation occurs in both good
and poor weather conditions. Leading causes were poor cockpit
resource management (CRM) which led to inattention of awareness,
bad weather, and poor decision making.
Maintaining geographical orientation is extremely critical
in aviation settings. Loss of orientation can possibly lead to
2
severe and fatal consequences such as fuel exhaustion, collision
with the terrain and/or man-made structures, mid-air collisions
due to entering congested airspace, or approaching/landing at an
unintended runway. Several researchers have identified this type
of disorientation as a key component of a pilot's loss of
situational awareness (Battiste, 1993; Endsley, 1993; Harwood,
Barnett, & Wickens, 1988; Sarter & Woods, 1991; Wickens, 1992).
While various methods of navigation exist, pilotage is a
form of visual navigation that is commonly used by pilots and it
will be explored in this paper. Pilotage involves visually
locating a series of landmarks while flying at relatively low
altitudes. A flight path is typically plotted out on an
aeronautical chart before a flight is performed. While airborne,
a pilot determines his/her route and position by comparison of
map features to their corresponding visual counterparts in the
outside world. Efficient use of pilotage includes a flight path
which has landmarks that can be easily identified such as
mountains, bodies of water, cities, and large man-made objects
(Cessna, 1986).
An example of how pilotage is performed can be illustrated
in Figure 1. Here the pilot would fly along the depicted course
by making judgements of distance and orientation between
landmarks (such as the mountain peak, the bend in the river, and
the lake) and specify the relationship of these landmarks to
their corresponding depictions on an aeronautical chart or map.
The pilot needs to continuously use a process which confirms the
3
location of outside visual landmarks relative to their location
on a map in order to achieve and maintain geographic awareness.
If the pilot cannot verify this relationship, then geographic
awareness is lost.
Because helicopter pilots often fly low to the ground,
pilotage is a critical component of their navigation task. The
huge demands of visual navigation in helicopter flight were
demonstrated in a study by Sanders, Simmons, and Hoffman (1979).
They examined the visual workload of U.S. Army copilots/
navigators during nap-of-the-earth (NOE) terrain flight and found
that over 92% of the copilots' total visual time was devoted
solely to navigational duties. These results reflected the
tremendous importance of geographical orientation and its
maintenance, especially at low altitudes. In response to these
results, a study by Cote, Krueger, and Simmons (1983) was
performed, which tested if new automatic navigation equipment
reduced geographic disorientation and high workload problems of
NOE flight. The results of this study indicated that helicopter
crews who only navigated with a hand held map made significantly
more navigational errors than did crews using the map in
conjunction with the new navigational equipment.
Geographic awareness needed for this type of low altitude
navigation is usually assisted through some combination of map
study and previous experience in an environment. For many years,
map study was the only method of becoming familiar with the
navigational aspects of an upcoming flight. However, recent