Evaluation of the Space Shuttle Cockpit Avionics Upgrade (CAU) Displays
In 1999, NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) initiated a Cockpit Avionics Upgrade (CAU) project to increase shuttle mission safety by improving the crew's situation awareness, reducing their workload, and improving their performance. The primary focus of the project was a complete redesign of the current cockpit displays. To determine the effectiveness of the redesigns, a human-centered evaluation was conducted in the Shuttle Mission Simulator (SMS) at NASA JSC in 2003 and 2004. Measures of crew situation awareness, workload, and nominal and off-nominal task handling performance were made in a series of simulations of off-nominal flight situations during the dynamic flight phases of ascent and entry. The redesigned display formats yielded dramatic increases in situation awareness, reductions in workload, and improvements in performance.
Case study of the Space Shuttle cockpit avionics upgrade software
The purpose of the Space Shuttle Cockpit Avionics Upgrade project was to reduce crew workload and improve situational awareness. The upgrade was to augment the Shuttle avionics system with new hardware and software. An early version of this system was used to gather human factor statistics in the Space Shuttle Motion Simulator of the Johnson Space Center for one month by multiple teams of astronauts. The results were compiled by NASA Ames Research Center and it was determined that the system provided a better than expected increase in situational awareness and reduction in crew workload. Even with all of the benefits of the system, NASA cancelled the project towards the end of the development cycle. A major success of this project was the validation of the hardware architecture and software design. This was significant because the project incorporated new technology and approaches for the development of human rated space software. This paper serves as a case study to document knowledge gained and techniques that can be applied for future space avionics development efforts. The major technological advances were the use of reflective memory concepts for data acquisition and the incorporation of Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) products in a human rated space avionics system. The infused COTS products included a real time operating system, a resident linker and loader, a display generation tool set, and a network data manager. Some of the successful design concepts were the engineering of identical outputs in multiple avionics boxes using an event driven approach and inter-computer communication, a reconfigurable data acquisition engine, the use of dynamic linking at runtime, and the use of a dynamic bus bandwidth allocation algorithm. Other significant experiences captured were the use of prototyping to reduce risk, and the correct balance between Object Oriented and Functional based programming.
Displays and controls
Abstract This chapter examines the various types of displays and controls, as well as the design characteristics that make them effective or less so. Since there are many types of displays and controls already in existence, an overview is presented in this chapter to assist the practicing ergonomist in the selection of displays and controls. Important distinctions are made between quantitative and qualitative displays as well as discrete and continuous controls. Population stereotypes are also discussed as they affect the design of displays and controls.