There are many inherent challenges in the design and development of Unmanned Autonomous System (UAS) control interfaces. Despite the fact that advances in technologies are beginning to address some of these issues, the growing employment of UASs increases the complexity of the problem space. Multiple UAS platforms have led to a wide disparity among operator interfaces. Rather than continue to increase the number of interfaces as the number of platforms increase, one option is the adoption of a common UAS operator interface. The goal of such an approach is to reduce manufacturing, maintenance, and supply costs, streamline training, and ultimately, improve human performance.

In order to develop design guidelines for the common interface, a set of common tasks were developed based on task analytical data from the Global Hawk and Predator UAS communities. After segmenting the common tasks by phase of flight, each task was evaluated with regard to the implications for interface requirements. Evaluation results and recommendations are provided for a common UAS operator interface.