Introduction to ASCI 638

 Introduction

Hi Everyone!

By way of introduction, I am a maintenance officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force. I am currently responsible for the sole human centrifuge in Canada used for training fast-jet pilot candidates. In previous postings, I have worked on the C130J Super Hercules, deployed as part of Op Inherent Resolve and also worked at the corporate headquarters overseeing business planning. In terms of academics, I have a bachelor's of mechanical engineering, a masters of business administration and am currently past the half-way point of my MSc in Unmanned Systems.  In my spare time, I like to travel leisurely with my wife and newborn daughter. I also enjoy sports such as squash and soccer.

Nice to meet you all!

In terms of what I learned in module 1, I would like to say that I really enjoyed the FAA videos as they provided a great overview of all the different agencies/stakeholders that have a vested interest in laying the foundation and roadmap for UAS integration and regulation to allow it to intertwine with existing legacy systems.  The main lesson that stuck with me this week is the example of how a small interface design solution had caused a catastrophic crash. The example was pertaining to the beta-mode indicator that was white which was overlay-ed into the screen which had white clouds in the back.  This white and white symbology meant that the pilot had no means to differentiate this icon so he did not have the awareness that his aircraft was in a reverse pitch scenario.  This is such an obvious design error but without hindsight, it was simply overlooked and caused such grief for all those involved.  The take-away here is that human factors designs whether it is ergonomic, visual, audio or tactile can play a significant role in workload/anxiety for the pilot operator.  The pilot will be under a lot of stress absorbing multi-modes of data and sensors so any simple shortcuts to help ease their processing of this magnitude of data will definitely yield immense benefit for their cognitive well-being and overall performance!

-Barry