Designing Soldier Systems

This book focuses on contemporary human factors issues within the design of soldier systems and describes how they are currently being investigated and addressed by the U.S. Army to enhance soldier performance and effectiveness. Designing Soldier Systems approaches human factors issues from three main perspectives. In the first section, Chapters 1-5 focus on complexity introduced by technology, its impact on human performance, and how issues are being addressed to reduce cognitive workload. In the second section, Chapters 6-10 concentrate on obstacles imposed by operational and environmental conditions on the battlefield and how they are being mitigated through the use of technology. The third section, Chapters 11-21, is dedicated to system design and evaluation including the tools, techniques and technologies used by researchers who design soldier systems to overcome human physical and cognitive performance limitations as well as the obstacles imposed by environmental and operations conditions that are encountered by soldiers. The book will appeal to an international multidisciplinary audience interested in the design and development of systems for military use, including defense contractors, program management offices, human factors engineers, human system integrators, system engineers, and computer scientists. Relevant programs of study include those in human factors, cognitive science, neuroscience, neuroergonomics, psychology, training and education, and engineering.

Pamela Savage-Knepshield is a research psychologist and Chief of the Human Factors Integration Division at the Army Research Laboratory’s (ARL) Human Research and Engineering Directorate (HRED). She earned a Ph.D. in Psychology from Rutgers University and holds one patent assigned to AT&T Corp. In 2008, she received the Department of the Army’s MANPRINT Practitioner of the Year award. In 2010, she returned from serving a tour in Iraq as an Army Materiel Command (AMC) Field Assistance in Science and Technology (FAST) Science Advisor and is a recipient of the Superior Civilian Award and the Global War on Terrorism Civilian Service Medal. She is the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society’s Bulletin Feature Editor and Army Chair of the Department of Defense Human Factors Engineering Technical Advisory Group. John Martin is an operations research analyst working in the area of MANPRINT and human factors engineering. He is currently an AMC FAST Science Advisor at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Grafenwoehr, Germany. He has graduate degrees from Columbia University in Mathematics and Education. He has also done graduate work in Human Factors at Virginia Tech and the University of Michigan and is a member of the Army Acquisition Corps. John Lockett III is Chief of the Integration Methods Branch in ARL HRED. He received a Masters in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech and a B.S. in Engineering Psychology from Tufts University. He has over 25 years research and development experience in human factors and has concentrated on application of workload analysis and human figure modeling technologies to MANPRINT, the US Army's HSI program. Laurel Allender, Ph.D., was appointed as the Director of ARL HRED at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD in January 2011. Dr. Allender began her career in 1984 at the Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences at Fort Bliss, TX where her research led to the development of an automated assessment capability