Human factors at the Navy; “The ones who win…”

I am slowly starting to get integrated into my work at the Navy. I am part of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center’s (NUWC) Combat Systems Division. NUWC is divided into many departments that are divided based on submarine systems. If you think of the submarine as an information processing unit, you have the input in the form of sonar and other sensors, the output of navigation and ordinance, and then you have the “brains” that integrates data and provides output solutions. This is what Combat Systems does.

The motto I see over and over is:

The ones who win get the right amount of the right information to the right people at the right time to help them make the right decision.

From a human factors standpoint, this is a critical mission. Information is needed in a real-time fashion; if a sonar display is 30 seconds old, it could be useless. Additionally, who needs to see what information? Commanding officers does not need the low-level details of how a target was identified. Instead, they need a big picture overview of the battlespace. Similarly, operators do not need the gritty numbers output by the sensors. The data needs to be interpreted for the optimal presentation to the operator. This is the domain of the Data Fusion group, which deals mostly in engineering, algorithms, and mathematics.

My boss put it most succinctly: engineers need to make sure bits flow to the screen. Psychologists need to make sure the information flows into the brain. From the sounds of things, I will help accomplish that task this summer by working with the group’s Applied Science Laboratory eyetracker.

It’s not the one I’m used to, but it’s much better for applied settings versus basic research. I am looking forward to it! More details as I get them.