FALLS CHURCH, Va., Nov. 1 (UPI) -- A new remote "cockpit" has been developed to give operators of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) a better view of what is going on around the aircraft.
Raytheon Tuesday unveiled the Universal Control System (UCS), which was built with heavy input from UAV operators and borrowed advanced intuitive interface technology from the high-tech video game industry.
"We took the best-of-breed technologies from the gaming industry and coupled them with our 35 years of command-and-control expertise and developed a state-of-the-art universal cockpit built around the operator," Raytheon's Mark Bigham said at an industry conference outside Washington.
"We broke down the operator's tasks and objectives and constructed a system built entirely around them," he added.
The UCS is arranged in a "wrap-around" fashion that places the operator in a virtual cockpit that allows for multiple views of what is going on around the UAV, and can control multiple aircraft simultaneously.
The goal of the new control system is to reduce the number of accidents involving UAVs. Raytheon said a 2004 study by the Federal Aviation Administration found that operators were a factor in 21 percent of the accidents involving the Shadow UAV and 67 percent of Predator mishaps.
The use of intuitive user technology in the UCS should help operators learn the finer points of flying UAVs and managing the large amounts of flight and intelligence data produced by the aircraft more quickly and with less formal training.
