Since the Industrial Revolution, automated systems have increasingly become a part of everyday life. Automated systems range in scale and scope from simple assists to complete robotic replacements. Inexpensive integrated circuits, sensors and microprocessors have allowed automated systems to become smaller, cheaper and more prevalent. Identifying appropriate opportunities for automation,...
Emergency stop controls are essential parts of industrial machinery because they
are designed to stop the operation in case of emergencies without risks to operators,
equipment, products, or facilities. Current guidelines for emergency stop controls have
been formulated based on experience but not on empirical studies.
The main objectives of...
This research is an effort to explore the nature of good work, a concept that describes work that is beneficial to the physical, psychological, and social dimensions of its stakeholders, including and especially the worker. This effort is divided into four distinct parts. First, the construct of good work is...
There is a strong interest in the robotics community in learning how humans grasp and manipulate objects, partly because robots need to operate in human environments and partly because humans are currently much better in physical interaction tasks than robots. This thesis seeks to identify the human heuristics for grasping...
While there are many ways to evaluate a user interface design, the user's mental workload and situation awareness (SA) are particularly important considerations in the supervisory control of safety-critical systems. Typically, operators of these systems must monitor high-volume, time-sensitive status information. Interface design for this domain can be challenging and...
This exploratory study looks at communication perspectives and applies them to
the transcript of USAir Flight 427, a flight that crashed while attempting to land.
Researchers calculate that 60% to 80% of the accidents can he traced to pilot error.
Many of these errors occur through a single communication event...
In conformity with advanced cockpit automation technology,
modern pilots have become airborne system managers
and have to satisfactorily manage complex sets of tasks to
complete a flight mission safely. Funk's (1991) normative
cockpit task management (CTM) theory defines CTM functions
as the initiation, monitoring, prioritization, allocating
of resources to, and...
The flightcrew of a modern airliner operates in a multi-tasking environment with
several tasks competing for the same attentional resources at the same time. Too many
tasks vying for the crew's attention concurrently imposes a heavy workload on the
flightcrew. This results in the satisfactory execution of some tasks at...
A significant number of aircraft incidents and accidents have been caused, in part, by flightcrew failure to properly manage cockpit activities, such as failure to initiate
activities at the appropriate time, misprioritization of activities, or the failure to
appropriately monitor activities and terminate them when required. To facilitate the
management...