Coping with unreliable automation: content/format/form in the design of human-automation systems

The research presented in this thesis is funded by the European Union and addresses the relationship between people and automated decision support in the context of Traffic Management. Given that automation might not always be 100% reliable, the first research question to be addressed is what effect does automation reliability have on human decision making? User trials contribute to addressing the question of, how can user interfaces be designed to cope with the effects of different levels of automation reliability. The thesis is developed around the concept of Content (the users’ information requirements), Format (the paradigm of interaction and communication protocols) and Form (how information is presented to the users). Results demonstrate that, even in the absence of explicit feedback, users are sensitive to automation reliability and can adapt their information search and decision making strategies accordingly. The user’s decision on whether or not to seek further information cannot be attributed only to information availability or accessing costs, but the visual appearance of the user interface can have a higher influence on user behaviour. These observations and conclusions led to the refinement of the Content/Format/Form concept to a broader sociotechnical design framework

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 324)

This bibliography lists 200 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during May, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

How to keep drivers engaged while supervising driving automation? A literature survey and categorization of six solution areas

This work aimed to organise recommendations for keeping people engaged during human supervision of driving automation, encouraging a safe and acceptable introduction of automated driving systems. First, heuristic knowledge of human factors, ergonomics, and psychological theory was used to propose solution areas to human supervisory control problems of sustained attention. Driving and non-driving research examples were drawn to substantiate the solution areas. Automotive manufacturers might (1) avoid this supervisory role altogether, (2) reduce it in objective ways or (3) alter its subjective experiences, (4) utilize conditioning learning principles such as with gamification and/or selection/training techniques, (5) support internal driver cognitive processes and mental models and/or (6) leverage externally situated information regarding relations between the driver, the driving task, and the driving environment. Second, a cross-domain literature survey of influential human-automation interaction research was conducted for how to keep engagement/attention in supervisory control. The solution areas (via numeric theme codes) were found to be reliably applied from independent rater categorisations of research recommendations. Areas (5) and (6) were addressed by around 70% or more of the studies, areas (2) and (4) in around 50% of the studies, and areas (3) and (1) in less than around 20% and 5%, respectively. The present contribution offers a guiding organisational framework towards improving human attention while supervising driving automation.submittedVersio

Pilot Performance and Eye Movement Activity with Varying Levels of Display Integration in a Synthetic Vision Cockpit

The primary goal of the present study was to investigate the effects of display integration in a simulated commercial aircraft cockpit equipped with a synthetic vision display. Combinations of display integration level (low/high), display view (synthetic vision view/traditional display), and workload (low/high) were presented to each participant. Sixteen commercial pilots flew multiple approaches under IMC conditions in a moderate fidelity fixed-base part-task simulator. Pilot performance data, visual activity, mental workload, and self-report situation awareness were measured. Congruent with the Proximity Compatibility Principle, the more integrated display facilitated superior performance on integrative tasks (lateral and vertical path maintenance), whereas a less integrated display elicited better focus task performance (airspeed maintenance). The synthetic vision displays facilitated superior path maintenance performance under low workload, but these performance gains were not as evident during high workload. The majority of the eye movement findings identified differences in visual acquisition of the airspeed indicator, the glideslope indicator, the localizer, and the altimeter as a function of display integration level or display view. There were more fixations on the airspeed indicator with the more integrated display layout and during high workload trials. There were also more fixations on the glideslope indicator with the more integrated display layout. However, there were more fixations on the localizer with the less integrated display layout. There were more fixations on the altimeter with the more integrated display and with the traditional view. Only a few eye movement differences were produced by the synthetic vision displays; pilots looked at the glideslope indicator and the altimeter less with the synthetic vision view. This supports the notion that utilizing a synthetic vision display should not adversely impact visual acquisition of data. Self-report mental workload and situation awareness data highlight additional benefits of display integration and synthetic vision displays. Design and retrofit implications are discussed and future research is suggested to further examine these issues

A user-centered approach to road design : blending distributed situation awareness with self-explaining roads

Driving is a complex dynamic task. As the car driver drives along a route they have to adjust their driving technique in accordance with the traffic level, infrastructure and environment around them. The amount of information in the environment would be overwhelming were it not for the presence of stored mental templates, accumulated through training and experience, which become active when certain features are encountered. Problems occur when the environment triggers the incorrect templates, or fails to trigger the correct templates. Problems like these can be overcome by adopting a “self-explaining” (SER) approach to road design. That is to say, purposefully designed roads which trigger correct behaviour. A concept which can help improve the theoretical robustness of the SER approach is Situation Awareness (SA). SA describes how the environment and mental templates work together to ensure drivers remain coupled to the dynamics of their situation. It is a widely researched concept in the field of Human Factors but not in the domain of Self-Explaining Roads (SER), despite the very obvious conceptual overlaps. This thesis, for the first time, blends the two approaches, SA and SER, together. From this the ability to extract cognitively salient features and ability to enhance driving behaviour and their effects on driving behaviour are sufficiently enhanced. After establishing SA as critical to driving through literature review the experiment phase started with determining the source of driver SA. Road environment was found to be of utmost importance for feeding into driver SA. This was also confirmed with the results of the on-road exploratory study. The success of the exploratory study led to large scale naturalistic study. It provided data on driver mental workload, subjective situation awareness, speed profile and endemic feature. Endemic features are unique characteristics of a road which make a road what it is. It was found that not all endemic features contribute to SA of a road system. Therefore through social network analysis list of cognitive salient features were derived. It is these cognitive salient features which hold compatible SA and facilitate SA transaction in a road system. These features were found to reduce speed variance among drivers on a road. The thesis ends by proposing a ‘road drivability tool’ which can predict potentially dangerous zones. Overall, the findings contribute to new imaginative ways road design in order to maximize safety and efficiency

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 325)

This bibliography lists 192 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during June, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

Embodying Design

Rethinking design through the lens of embodied cognition provides a novel way of understanding human interaction with technology. In this book, Christopher Baber uses embodied cognition as a lens through which to view both how designers engage in creative practices and how people use designed artifacts. This view of cognition as enactive, embedded, situated, or distributed, without recourse to internal representations, provides a theoretical grounding that makes possible a richer account of human interaction with technology. This understanding of everyday interactions with things in the world reveals opportunities for design to intervene. Moreover, Baber argues, design is an embodied activity in which the continual engagement between designers and their materials is at the heart of design practice. Baber proposes that design and creativity should be considered in dynamic, rather than discrete, terms and explores “task ecologies”—the concept of environment as it relates to embodied cognition. He uses a theory of affordance as an essential premise for design practice, arguing that affordances are neither form nor function but arise from the dynamics within the human-artifact-environment system. Baber explores agency and intent of smart devices and implications of tangible user interfaces and activity recognition for human-computer interaction. He proposes a systems view of human-artifact-environment interactions—to focus on any one component or pairing misses the subtleties of these interactions. The boundaries between components remain, but the borders that allow exchange of information and action are permeable, which gives rise to synergies and interactions

A Topology of Shared Control Systems—Finding Common Ground in Diversity

Shared control is an increasingly popular approach to facilitate control and communication between humans and intelligent machines. However, there is little consensus in guidelines for design and evaluation of shared control, or even in a definition of what constitutes shared control. This lack of consensus complicates cross fertilization of shared control research between different application domains. This paper provides a definition for shared control in context with previous definitions, and a set of general axioms for design and evaluation of shared control solutions. The utility of the definition and axioms are demonstrated by applying them to four application domains: automotive, robot-assisted surgery, brain–machine interfaces, and learning. Literature is discussed for each of these four domains in light of the proposed definition and axioms. Finally, to facilitate design choices for other applications, we propose a hierarchical framework for shared control that links the shared control literature with traded control, co-operative control, and other human–automation interaction methods. Future work should reveal the generalizability and utility of the proposed shared control framework in designing useful, safe, and comfortable interaction between humans and intelligent machines

Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Version 2.0

This Standardization Roadmap for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Version 2.0 (“roadmap”) is an update to version 1.0 of this document published in December 2018. It identifies existing standards and standards in development, assesses gaps, and makes recommendations for priority areas where there is a perceived need for additional standardization and/or pre-standardization R&D. The roadmap has examined 78 issue areas, identified a total of 71 open gaps and corresponding recommendations across the topical areas of airworthiness; flight operations (both general concerns and application-specific ones including critical infrastructure inspections, commercial services, and public safety operations); and personnel training, qualifications, and certification. Of that total, 47 gaps/recommendations have been identified as high priority, 21 as medium priority, and 3 as low priority. A “gap” means no published standard or specification exists that covers the particular issue in question. In 53 cases, additional R&D is needed. As with the earlier version of this document, the hope is that the roadmap will be broadly adopted by the standards community and that it will facilitate a more coherent and coordinated approach to the future development of standards for UAS. To that end, it is envisioned that the roadmap will continue to be promoted in the coming year. It is also envisioned that a mechanism may be established to assess progress on its implementation