Human-Automation Interaction and Safety

When people work alongside automated systems—whether a lane-keeping assistant or a fully self-driving car—their safety depends not just on the technology's reliability but on how accurately they understand, trust, and remain mentally engaged with it. Researchers study how drivers distribute attention, how quickly they can regain situational awareness after handing control back from automation, and why people sometimes trust systems too much or too little for their own good. A central open question is how cognitive load and mental workload shift as vehicles take on more driving tasks, and whether those shifts leave people less prepared to intervene when automation fails. Understanding these dynamics is pressing because autonomous vehicles are already on public roads, yet the psychological conditions under which humans and machines collaborate safely remain only partially mapped.

Works

80,291

Total citations

883,862

Keywords

TrustAutomationDriver DistractionMental WorkloadSituation AwarenessAutonomous Vehicles