Human-Automation Interaction and Safety

How much people trust automated systems — and whether that trust is calibrated to what those systems can actually do — shapes whether automation makes human activity safer or more dangerous. Researchers studying human-automation interaction examine how drivers, pilots, and other operators allocate attention, maintain awareness of what a system is doing, and recover control when automation fails or hands tasks back unexpectedly. A central tension in the work on autonomous vehicles is that higher automation can reduce moment-to-moment mental workload while simultaneously eroding the situation awareness needed to intervene quickly in a crisis. Open questions include how to design interfaces that sustain appropriate trust without inducing complacency, and how individual differences in cognitive load tolerance affect whether people use automated systems safely in real-world conditions.

Works

82,344

Total citations

896,116

Keywords

TrustAutomationDriver DistractionMental WorkloadSituation AwarenessAutonomous Vehicles