Transforming Aviation: Engaging a Crowd of 20+ Gamers as Next Gen Inspiration for Controlling Uncrewed Aircraft Systems
The Client
- NASA Tournament Lab (On behalf of NASA Uncrewed Systems Team)
- Industry: Aerospace
- Organization Size: 17,960
- Use Case:
- Crowd-Based Ideation
The Challenge:
NASA is exploring future aviation operations where operators will remotely control multiple uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) simultaneously. The challenge lies in ensuring the ground control station software provides sufficient information without cluttering the display and overloading the operator. NASA has developed a ground control station software called MPATH (Measuring Performance for Autonomy Teaming with Humans), and the goal of this challenge was to generate novel ideas and out-of-the-box inspiration to support improvements to the MPATH multi-vehicle control functionality.
The Solution (and our approach to it):
Floor23 approached this challenge by requesting solvers to identify and document real-world examples of multi-agent control and/or monitoring from personal experience, primarily video games or other non-aircraft related experiences requiring multi-agent control. This approach leveraged the collective knowledge and diverse experiences of the participants to generate innovative solutions for the complex problem at hand.
Results:
The challenge has been successfully completed. Over the course of the 14-week timeline, we received 15 submissions from freelancers sharing their experiences. These insights were compiled into a final report that will guide the improvement of the MPATH multi-vehicle control functionality. The second part of the challenge yielded 3-5 mockups per participant, which were compiled into one final design. This successful completion of the challenge underscores our commitment to leveraging crowd-sourced innovation to solve complex problems.
