A Virtual Environment for mission planning and supervision of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems

Situation Awareness has been studied since the late 1980s as one of the most interesting area within human factors research and has become a central concept in human decision making models. Since its origins it is related to the aviation domain, where providing a high level of SA is still a major challenge. Moreover, the increasing spread of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems, also known as Unmanned Aircraft Systems, needs to be matched with the development of tools that support pilots in crucial procedures. This paper presents a software solution to improve the Situation Awareness of a Remotely Piloted Aircraft operator carrying out the tasks that belong to mission planning and flight supervision in particular. The tool displays a 3D Virtual Environment that shows the operational scenario and contextualizes relevant information about it: exploiting Virtual Reality the software enables the operator to visualize a representation of the environment and then to perceive the possible obstacles and issues for the flight.