An evaluation of cognitive and neural correlates for indirect vision driving and rover teleoperation

An essential aspect of escalating and improving the situational awareness of military personnel is related to the development and evaluation of indirect vision-based user interfaces, which provides full-spectrum local area awareness to the individual. But, a study which identifies the cognitive-ergonomic challenges in using such indirect vision-based user interfaces is lacking in the literature. In our study, we evaluated the cognitive, behavioral and neurological challenges faced by an individual when he/she was navigating and maneuvering a teleoperated rover across a physical terrain with the objective of searching and collecting a certain number of apriori specified memory objects among a lot of distinct/similar looking memory objects which were distributed randomly across the terrain course. We recorded Electroencephalographic (EEG) data from a 14-channel electrode device called EMOTIV-EPOC and also recorded various behavioral measures when the subject was executing the task, in addition to the cognitive variables recorded by the self-reported NASA-TLX. The results indicated that cognitive variables from the NASA-TLX, appropriate behavioral variables recorded during the teleoperation experiment and the energies extracted from the alpha band from the frontal lobe are excellent descriptors/features which can be taken into consideration for preparing personalized cognitive enhancement and training material for indirect vision driving. These descriptors would be very helpful in indicating the optimum transfer of workload and attention from the computer-based simulations to the real world.