Date of Award

9-1998

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Abstract

Wearable computers and Portable Maintenance Aids (PMAs) may soon be the normal way of doing aircraft maintenance in the Air Force. Currently, the Air Force uses the paper form of Technical Orders (TO's) while doing aircraft maintenance. The purpose of this thesis was to compare the effects of three different media presentations of the information used during aircraft maintenance. The three different presentations compared are the current paper form, a Head Mounted Display (HMD), and an auditory mode. An experiment was conducted to determine if there was a significant difference between the systems (in terms of task completion times and user preference). Nine F-15E maintenance technicians from the 4th Fighter Wing, Seymour Johnson AFB, NC were chosen to participate in this experiment. Each individual accomplished the same task using the three different systems. While some treatment effects were in the predicted direction, differences were not statistically significant. The results weakly suggested that these technicians preferred the newer technology to the current paper form. The primary conclusion is that there may be a use for technology-augmented checklist presentation in the aircraft maintenance arena. This research establishes a foundation for future research efforts.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GAL-LAL-98S-02

DTIC Accession Number

ADA354266

Comments

Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Logistics and Acquisitions Management.

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