GIFT

NATO Human Factors and Medicine (HFM) Research Task Group (RTG) HFM-297 was established to support the “Assessment of augmentation technologies for improving human performance”. The members of the RTG met from 2017 to 2022. During this time, the team met at regular intervals (in-person and virtually) to define the scope of the augmentation technologies it would consider. This involved developing a framework to guide the controlled assessment of augmentation tools and methods against a set of defined metrics aligned to human performance and task outcomes. A goal was to analyze the relative merits of human performance as supported by augmentation and to identify cross-domain themes used to establish suggested best practices. This involves identifying recommendations for the continued application of, and research on augmentation technologies to support human performance in military contexts. These activities were supplemented by frequent engagements with military domain experts and requirements holders, and research and industry subject matter experts.

To manage the scope of augmentation technologies considered in the analyses, the RTG decided to focus primarily on technologies that “augment” the task environment and task process (e.g., synthetic environments, interface technologies) rather than the operator directly (e.g., exoskeletons, neural implants). Despite this distinction, maintaining a strict dissection between “environment-” and “operator-” aligned augmentation proved challenging. Nevertheless, with a scope defined, RTG 297 proceeded to develop a framework to analyze these technologies and integrate evidence from the research literature with operational requirements. The framework adopted for this investigation involved the application of the Strength-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis methodology.

The following five performance domains are broken down through a formalized SWOT analysis within the report, organized along an operational timeline from force generation to operations to post-operations lessons learned:

• Adaptive Instruction and Accelerated Readiness.
• Mission Preparation and Rehearsal.
• Real-Time Support and Remote Control.
• Cognitive Monitoring and Optimization.
• After Action Review.

The SWOT analyses applied to the performance domains yielded a number of themes common to all task domains and human performance requirements. These include:

• The centrality of human performance front-end considerations and human factors principles to the successful application of augmentation technologies;
• The inherent dependence on data and information technology infrastructure in the effective implementation of these technologies, and the need to sustain investment and efforts in developing data standards and overall data strategies to ensure interoperability and extensibility;
• Security, reliability, privacy and ethical considerations will play a determining role in augmentation technologies as they become increasingly adopted by military organizations;
The very dynamic (rapidly evolving) nature of the technologies themselves and the mission sets to which they could be applied create significant challenges for systematic assessments of their effectiveness and value, in particular for the traditional, report-based format typical of RTG studies;
• Nonetheless, the evidence reviewed by the RTG makes it clear that a number of augmentation technologies already have established track records in training (e.g., adaptive instructional systems, visual synthetic environments) and operational (e.g., augmented reality) settings; and
• A number of evolving technologies (e.g., machine learning, performance monitoring, haptic interfaces for virtual reality) hold significant promise for near- and far-term applications in support of military human performance and training, but further research is required before operationally valid.