Department head John Cochran, visiting research professor Harold Zallen and graduate student Judith Bailey are looking at human factors that might be attributed to recent unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crashes during landing. By using a static flight simulator built at Auburn, they are able to simulate extended UAV missions, as well as monitor and measure pilot fatigue and errors.

Test pilots sit at a console, watching a monitor the size of a standard computer screen. They fly a simulated Predator UAV, demonstrating take-off and a series of maneuvers, ascending to 60,000 feet and cruising for 30 minutes. Test pilots then descend and land, the most difficult task in flying a UAV. The researchers’ tracking software is used to monitor a controller’s head movement in six degrees of freedom, which includes forward, backward, upward, downward and left to right movements combined with rotation of three perpendicular axes ­— pitch, yaw and roll. Information provided by the tracking software analyzes controller fatigue during the simulation.