Objective: Evaluate and model the advantage of a situation awareness (SA) supported by an augmented reality (AR) display for the ground-based joint terminal attack Controller (JTAC), in judging and describing the spatial relations between objects in a hostile zone.
Background: The accurate world-referenced description of relative locations of surface objects, when viewed from an oblique slant angle (aircraft, observation post) is hindered by (1) the compression of the visual scene, amplified at a lower slang angle, (2) the need for mental rotation, when viewed from a non-northerly orientation.
Approach: Participants viewed a virtual reality (VR)-simulated four-object scene from either of two slant angles, at each of four compass orientations, either unaided, or aided by an AR head-mounted display (AR-HMD), depicting the scene from a top-down (avoiding compression) and north-up (avoiding mental rotation) perspective. They described the geographical layout of four objects within the display.
Results: Compared with the control condition, that condition supported by the north-up SA display shortened the description time, particularly on non-northerly orientations (9 s, 30% benefit), and improved the accuracy of description, particularly for the more compressed scene (lower slant angle), as fit by a simple computational model.
Conclusion: The SA display provides large, significant benefits to this critical phase of ground-air communications in managing an attack-as predicted by the task analysis of the JTAC.
Application: Results impact the design of the AR-HMD to support combat ground-air communications and illustrate the magnitude by which basic cognitive principles "scale up" to realistically simulated real-world tasks such as search and rescue.
Keywords: augmented reality; head-mounted display; mental rotation; situation awareness; spatial judgments.