Northrop Grumman and DARPA Will Develop AI Assistant For The UH-60 Black Hawk

TR_123456 · Feb 12, 2022

An example showing the AI assistant augmenting the crew’s response to an engine fire. (Photo: Northrop Grumman)

The new AI assistant will help helicopter pilots to perform tasks within and beyond their skillsets.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to develop a prototype Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant that will be integrated in the UH-60 Black Hawk as part of the agency’s Perceptually-enabled Task Guidance (PTG) program. The prototype will be embedded in an augmented reality (AR) headset mounted on the helmet to help helicopter pilots perform both expected and unexpected complex tasks.

Northrop Grumman is working on this project, which has been named Operator and Context Adaptive Reasoning Intuitive Assistant (OCARINA), in partnership with the University of Central Florida (UCF). The assistant will support UH-60 Blackhawk pilots during both visual and instrumented flight. “The goal of this prototype is to broaden a pilot’s skillset,” said Erin Cherry, senior autonomy program manager at Northrop Grumman. “It will help teach new tasks, aide in the recognition and reduction of errors, improve task completion time, and most importantly, help to prevent catastrophic events.”

Rotorcraft aircrews face numerous demands particularly when flying in close proximity to buildings, terrain, people and from the threat of adversary radar systems. Today, helicopters are generally equipped with simple warning systems which are the most common means for aiding a rotorcraft aircrew, such as auditory alerts to increase altitude or warning lights to signals a multitude of different problems. These warning systems however are limiting and can induce unanticipated cognitive burdens on pilots, with studies showing that inattentional blindness to such warnings can occur and can often make them ineffective for the aircrew.

Nowadays, military personnel are expected to perform an increasing number of tasks which are more complex than ever before. Mechanics, for example, are asked to repair more types of increasingly sophisticated machines and platforms, and Medics are asked to perform more procedures over extended periods of time. The goal of the PTG program is to make users more versatile by expanding their skillset and more proficient by reducing their errors.