PACIFIC SCIENCE & ENGINEERING GROUP, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: There is great current interest in improving the contact management of submarines operated

Description

There is great current interest in improving the contact management of submarines operated in the littorals. Littoral contact management is challenging because the ambiguities inherent in contact localization make accurately reconstructing each contact a hard task. High littoral contact densities exacerbate the problem. Knowledge about contacts may become unhelpfully fragmented across the submarine team and there can be critical failures of the team mental model. In Phase I, PSE designed a concept prototype of a Team Assessment Grid (TAG) to support submarine littoral contact management. The TAG supports the team mental model by making the contact management processes explicit and verifiable. TAG applies scientific concepts from cognitive and collaboration science, tailored to a sophisticated understanding of domain requirements to create a simple, useful and usable tool for the section tracking party. In Phase II, PSE proposes to design, develop and validate a demonstration concept demonstration prototype of the TAG system, with both human performance testing and modeling and simulation. The TAG will improve the cognitive readiness of contact management teams by improving task performance, shared situation awareness and convergence of the team mental model. The project culminates in a whitepaper to NAVSEA to transition TAG through APB15.