SSC San Diego TR 1807

The Advanced Interface for Tactical Security (AITS) project was initiated to improve the task performance of security forces through technology and design improvements to information display systems. The project was implemented in three phases: (1) problem analysis and concept definition, (2) interface design and validation, and (3) communications tools development. This report contains the results of the first phase. Field observations and interviews were conducted with members of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps to identify information requirements for tactical security and related missions. Clusters of information needs that emerged from these efforts were then matched with human engineering principles of control and display design to generate a set of functional interface requirements, with an emphasis on performance commonality across tasks. Because military interviews highlighted the need for improved communications, this topic was added to the project as a distinct design focus. Finally, a review of advanced interface technologies was conducted to identify the engineering state-of-the-art, and results were used to select the hardware concepts for the baseline interface system. METHOD PURPOSE The primary purpose of this development effort was to design and validate new interface concepts for use by tactical security personnel. A secondary purpose was to fit these results into a larger context of information and visualization support for people whose jobs require a high degree of mobility and equipment portability, and where the demand for information is infrequent.