Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics

Multitasking performance requires the ability to perform multiple tasks in the same time period by switching between individual tasks. To quantify the performance, a quantitative model for user performance in a multitasking environment was proposed in this study. This model was based on Shannon’s information theory and quantified the information produced from each subtask in the multitasking environment. The Multi-Attribute Task Battery-II (MATB-II) was employed as a platform of multitasking. There were two phases of the experiment and ten participants completed the experiment. Results showed an overall improvement in user performance after reassigned task weights according to the proposed approach. Findings also indicated there was an effect of task difficulty on multitasking performance. The proposed model provided an approach to estimate and improve user performance in a multitasking environment.

In this paper, we used signal detection theory (SDT) as a tool to evaluate human performance in a multitasking environment. The primary objective of using SDT is to assess an operator’s sensitivity (d’) and bias (β). In addition, NASA-TLX was used to measure participants’ workload under different complexity scenarios. During the experiment, participants were asked to detect abnormal and alarm signals on a gauge monitoring display. They also needed to perform multi-attribute task battery (MATB) tasks at the same time. The gauge-monitoring screen contains total 52 gauges (flow, level, temperature, and pressure). The MATB consists of system monitoring, target tracking, and dynamic resource management. The results of this study demonstrate that participants showed various levels of sensitivity (d’) in the gauge-monitoring task based on the degree of task complexity.

Aviation safety has been the focus of attention since the birth of the first plane. As the safety of aircrafts itself has been greatly improved, aviation human factors have now become the main cause of aviation accidents. This paper mainly aims at building a workload comprehensive evaluation model with effective features deriving from the physiological parameters of the pilots. In order to extract the specific features related to the pilot’s workload, each physiological parameter collected in our experiment was tested for its validity and reliability separately. Finally, four main variables related to pilot’s workload were derived from the features screened as the pilot workload assessment comprehensive variables with the principal component analysis (PCA) and the absolute value of the four main variables all decrease when the workload of pilots increases.

Complex and highly automated systems impose high demands on employees with respect to cognitive capacity and the ability to cope with workload. Objectively registering mental workload at workplaces with high cognitive demands would enable prevention of over- and underload. Although urgently needed, such technical measurement is currently unfeasible. Hence, the goal of this work is the establishment of precisely such an objective method.In this article we briefly present a new method for registering mental workload by means of the electroencephalogram (EEG). Based on so called Dual Frequency Head Maps (DFHM) every 5 s we obtain an index of mental state ranging between the classes low, moderate, and high workload.Finally, we present results from a sample set of 54 people during the execution of the cognitive tasks 0-back, stroop test and AOSPAN in a laboratory setting. We compare them with our expectations based on the knowledge of task requirements on the executive functions as well as with further workload relevant biosignal data, performance data, and the NASA-TLX as a subjective questionnaire method. By this we gain proof of the integrity of the new method.

Previous research has shown that fatigue may reduce alertness and negatively impact job performance [1]. An over fatigued worker may increase the probability of an accident or incident. The purpose of this research study was to examine fatigue conditions and identify fatigue characteristics among air traffic controllers in China. Researchers utilized a survey to gain a clearer understanding of participant perceptions pertaining to fatigue. Survey items consisted of the following constructs: subjective fatigue, sleep quality, working factors, daily life factors, and personality. The results indicated that sleep quality and workload were major issues that caused the feeling of fatigue in the air traffic controllers surveyed. It is noticeable that daily life impact also contributed to the controller’s fatigue.

According to the airworthiness regulation, FAR25.1523 published by Federal Aviation Administration, the minimum flight crew must be established so that it is sufficient for safe operation considering the workload on individual crew members. Considering workload evaluation, typically, the measurements classified into three types: performance measures, subjective rating scale measures and psychophysiological measures. However, although these measurements are widely used in various fields, they could not reflect the behavior of flight crew during flight tasks comprehensively, especially their workload functions. Normally, the basic workload functions based on the flight crew behaviors consist of six aspects: flight path control, collision avoidance, navigation, communication, operation and monitoring of aircraft engines and systems and command decisions. In this study, upon the above six aspects, a measurement named Workload Function Distribution Method was developed, considering flight crew behaviors including fixations, actions and communications in flight tasks. In order to verify the Workload Function Distribution Method, three flight tasks with different complexity were carried out among 6 flight crews in a CRJ200 flight simulator. The three flight tasks were standard instrument approach, non-precision approach with normal weather condition and non-precision approach with turbulence. Furthermore, one of the subjective rating scale measures, NASA-TLX, was used as a verification method which collected after each task. The experiment results indicated that Workload Function Distribution Method could distinguish the different complexity of flight tasks, and related to the NASA-TLX Scale.In conclude, Workload Function Distribution Method was built up in this study. This measurement could effectively represent the flight crew workload based on their behaviors in flight tasks.

There is still a lack of empirical evidence on the effects of user-characteristics on behavior towards computer systems. With regard to this, usage behavior has been surveyed intensively during the last few years by means of partial huge samples. However, most studies use secondary sources (e.g. questionnaires) rather than investigating actual behavior as the dependent measure. The present study therefore aims to examine the impact of individual user characteristics on dealing with situations experienced as challenging when interacting with a computer system. This process revealed that findings in personality research can be transferred to human-computer interaction.

Spatial cognition is an important branch of cognition science. The behavior in the spatial cognition interactions between people was studied in our research. And the results will contribute to the design of robot’s cognitive system that similar to those of human which will make the robot much more intelligent to aids in human-robot cooperative work. We have designed several experimental scenes with different degree of ambiguity. In different scenes, the assistants will communicate with a commander through language and gesture on a single perspective or double perspectives. Based on these experiment, we can master the feature of human’s spatial language expression and the rule of choosing spatial reference frame in the human-human interaction of spatial cognition tasks. The following three results are summed up. (1) The assistants are inclined to use the “egocentric” and “exocentric” frames of reference. (2) The frequency of choosing reference frames increases with the improvement of scene ambiguity. (3) Compared with single perspective, the assistants need much less number of reference frames on the double perspectives.

In order to investigate the user cognitive processing of visual selective attention to icon navigation bar in the digital interface, 20 subjects were required to notice and remember the activated icons in the navigation bar selectively and judge whether or not target icon had presented in the navigation bar and if so press the button quickly. Their behavior and event-related potential (ERP) data were collected. Experimental results demonstrate that P200 and N400 components of navigation bar selective attention exist obvious differences in amplitude and latency under different activated icon quantities. In the recognition process of target stimulus icon, accuracy rate and reaction time both exist regular changes with the activated icon quantities, and target stimulus recognition N200 component distributing in different brain areas exists obvious differences.

Minimal affective learning is a phenomenon wherein people can learn about the affective meaning of other people with brief behavioral descriptions. Prior research mainly focused on affective learning with own-race faces. Own-race bias is a robust phenomenon describing that people can recognize own-race faces more efficiently than other-race faces. In the current study, we investigated whether own-race bias would influence minimal affective learning. Chinese participants learned Chinese and Caucasian faces paired with behaviors of different valence. After learning, they were asked to evaluate the learned faces and novel faces. Their eye movements and pupil diameters were continuously monitored during the experiment. We analyzed the change in pupil dilation to assess how much cognitive effort was required for affective learning. The results showed that participants only learned positive information with faces. Learning performance for other-race faces was similar with own-race faces. In addition, change of pupil dilation was larger when learning other-race than own-race faces, suggesting a greater cognitive effort for affective learning with other-race faces. Taken together, the results demonstrated that affective learning for other-race faces was more difficult than own-race faces. This research provided more support for the notion that different cognitive strategies were employed by faces of different race.

Though the concept of Situation Awareness (SA) was put forward over two decades, it is still a popular issue in the field of human factors. However, the current ‘situation’ has been changed a lot from the times when SA theory was born. More and more system parts have been designed to meet the requirement of context-aware, which means they have been distributed some cognitive function in a system. We propose out the concept of System Situation Awareness (SSA) and try to extend the range of awareness from human to system. SSA is influenced by the system’s ability of context-aware and human’s ability of situation awareness. The complex mechanism exists between human and system when maintaining SSA. This concept implies that the system would probably lose its SA when its context-aware ability gets weaken or lost. We should focus more on system design to enhance SSA with the approach of human system integration.

This paper describes the development of an experimental setup to test the multimodal information representation and superposition for elderly users in a categorical decision task. Due to the demographic change more and more elderly people will have to be supported monitoring their health on their own with new digital devices. Therefore it should be investigated how multimodal information presentation can help to compensate restrictions in perception that often come along with age. After reflecting the theoretical background an experimental setup is described. This setup will be realized as a native Android App to ensure ecological validity. The construction of the App and different tests measuring timing irregularities in the technical setup are also described.

With the rapid developments of computer technology and information technology, human-machine interfaces of aircrafts, ships, nuclear power plants, battlefield command system, and other complex information systems have evolved from the traditional control mode to digital control mode with visual information interface. This paper studies error factors of information interface in human-computer interaction based on visual cognition theory. A feasible error-cognition model is established to solve some design problems which result in serious failures in information recognition and analysis, and even in operation and execution processes. Based on Rasmussen, Norman, Reason and other error types as well as the HERA and CREAM failure identification models, we performed classification and cognitive characterization for error factors according to information search, information recognition, information identification, information selection and judgment as well as the decision-making process and obtained the comprehensive error-cognition model for complex information interface.

As a representative of online news information carrier, social media contain much information that difficult to be differentiate between true and false. Sina Weibo is the most popular social media in China and need to be took into account. This paper first identify criterions and cues for assessing the credibility of online news through literature review. Second, we interviewed 5 experts in the news information judgment process. According to the interview, we reviseed the effective criteria and cues for helping users assess the online news information. Third, we design and develop an assistant webpage as a tool to help Weibo users assess the credibility a specific Weibo news by visualizing cues related to its source, content, dissemination, and topic. Future work are to test the effectiveness and efficiency of the tool and improve it.

An eye movement study was conducted to study the visual factors which influencing the searching efficiency of bus stop board. 31 ordinary adults were measured to investigate the effects of the alignment patterns, the positions of the arrow indicating bus route direction on the searching efficiency of the different sexual passengers at different age stage by Eye-tracking. The eye movement experiment took the bus stop names as material, set simulated bus route, and made series of bus stop boards with different color combinations and graphic designs. The result shows that the difference in search time and fixation times between the positions of the direction arrow and the alignment patterns of the bus name list is significant. When the arrow was below of the bus stop name list, it cost much less time for distribute alignment bus stop boards than for top alignment ones in searching destination bus stop; and when the bus stop name list was in distribute alignment, those bus stop boards which the direction arrow was below the bus stop name list had a significant advantage over those that the arrow was above in searching time and fixation times. As a conclusion, the obtained results could be a reference for design the bus stop board.

It is a studying worthy problem whether highly visual complexity must bring low cognitive efficiency in icon design of visual interface. Although the visual noise of unreasonable and improper complexity seriously impacts the efficiency of users’ access and visual search tasks, few are able to determine the effects of memory on icon complexity in cognitive domain. The goal of the present study was to investigate the interaction between semantic memory and icon in a complexity perceptual layering method. The CP (Complexity of Presentation) and CM (Complexity of Memory) are presented in this article by a complex perceptual layering. Three laboratory experiments are conducted to assess the cognitive performances of three different complexities (low, medium and high) in three CP dimensions (shape feature, color feature, texture feature). Results revealed that, (1) One influence of semantic memory on icon complexity is the familiarity, the cognitive efficiency is enhanced when stimulus are processed in a high complex semantically meaningful way. (2) The cognitive performance of low complexity coding and high complexity coding is greater than the medium coding in the familiar test and the correlation test. (3) When searching for a similar target with stimulus in different complex levels, the gaze opacity and heat map data demonstrate the efficiency of medium-low and high-low are the highest. Based on the experimental results, it is validated that the interaction between semantic memory and icon complexity is a visual dimensionality reduction in a complexity perceptual layering.

Organizational conflict and phenotypical conflict are fundamental reasons that reduce human-computer interactive efficiency through digital interface. In order to solve these problems, doing research on cognitive relevance mechanism of DHCI structure and composition is necessary. This paper first constructed theoretical model between DHCI information design and user cognition. Second, introduced current research status of related field both domestic and foreign. Finally, proposed an experiment plan on 3 different smart phone App designs, elaborated the experiment objective and procedure. This research provided a new thinking way for DHCI information design.

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory is engaged in a multi-year program focusing on the human role in supervising autonomous vehicles. We discuss this research with regard to patterns of human/intelligent agent (IA) interrelationships, and explore the dynamics of these patterns in terms of supervising multiple autonomous vehicles. The first design pattern focuses on a human operator controlling multiple autonomous vehicles via a single IA. The second design pattern involves multiple intelligent systems including (a) human operator, (b) IA-asset manager, (c) IA-planning manager, (d) IA-mission monitor, and (e) multiple autonomous vehicles. Both scenarios require a single operator to control multiple heterogeneous autonomous vehicles, and yet the complexity of both the mission variables and the relations among the autonomous vehicles makes efficient operations by a single operator difficult at best. Key findings of two recent research programs are summarized with an emphasis on their implications for developing future systems with similar design patterns. Our conclusions stress the importance of operator situation awareness, not only of the immediate environment, but also of the IA’s intent, reasoning and predicted outcomes.

Design patterns have been found useful in several domains. This paper helps motivate their use in the field of human-autonomy teaming and provides three example patterns that could be contributed to the language of patterns available to system developers. In our examples we focus on the motivations and consequences in terms of human and team performance when describing the features of the individual patterns. These replace forces more commonly used in software engineering or other fields. Practitioners and researchers alike will benefit from a vetted vocabulary of established patterns of the form presented.

Team teleoperation, which is commonly seen in dangerous and inaccessible environments, is challenging by the complexity and dynamics of the environment, especially when there is time delay. This study was focused on Two-Operator-Two-Robot teleoperation and discussed the influence of time delay on team performance. In this study, we collected operational performance data, eye movement data and subjective rating to compare the performance of an object moving task with 0 s and 3.73 s time delay. Preliminary results of the experiment indicate that the increase of time delay significantly increase completion time and decrease fraction of time moving (MRATIO). In addition, time delay significantly increase the variance of the number of collisions and joint limit reach, which suggest that the inter-individual difference become greater under time delay.

Building on Shulte et al. [1], we deepen the concept of design patterns for human-autonomy teaming by introducing two distinctions. First, Patterns are composed of a Problem Pattern and a Solution Pattern, both of which should be described and linked so they can be recognized in design. Second, Patterns are hierarchically related in that SubPatterns capture more specific instances of their SuperPattern parents and, thus, can provide more specific design guidance. Both additions are explored within the general concept of supervisory control and specific instances from the Rotorcraft Pilot’s Associate program are analyzed using the formalism developed in the paper.

Integrating cognitive agents and robots into teams that operate in high-demand situations involves mutual and context-dependent behaviors of the human and agent/robot team-members. We propose a cognitive engineering method that includes the development of Interaction Design patterns for such systems as re-usable, theoretically and empirically founded, design solutions. This paper presents an overview of the background, the method and three example patterns.

Fighter pilots depend on collaboration and teamwork to perform successful air missions. However, such collaboration is challenging due to limitations in communication and the amount of data that can be shared between aircraft. In order to design future support systems for fighter pilots, this paper aims at characterizing how pilots collaborate while performing real-world missions. Our starting point is the “Big Five” model for effective teamwork, put forth by Salas et al. [1]. Fighter pilots were interviewed about their teamwork, and how they prepare and perform missions in teams. The results from the interviews were used to describe how pilots collaborate in teams, and to suggest relationships between the teamwork elements of the “Big Five” model for fighter pilots performing missions. The results presented in this paper are intended to inform designers and developers of cockpit displays, data links and decision support systems for fighter aircraft.

The aim of this article is to provide a common, easy to use nomenclature to describe highly automated human-machine systems in the realm of vehicle guidance and foster the identification of established design patterns for human-autonomy teaming. With this effort, we intend to facilitate the discussion and exchange of approaches to the integration of humans with cognitive agents amongst researchers and system designers. By use of this nomenclature, we identify most important top-level design patterns, such as delegation and associate systems, as well as hybrid structures of humans working with cognitive agents.

Unmanned aerial systems, advanced cockpits, and air traffic management are all seeing dramatic increases in automation. However, while automation may take on some tasks previously performed by humans, humans will still be required to remain in the system for the foreseeable future. The collaboration between humans and these increasingly autonomous systems will begin to resemble cooperation between teammates, rather than simple task allocation. It is critical to understand this human-autonomy teaming (HAT) to optimize these systems in the future. One methodology to understand HAT is by identifying recurring patterns of HAT that have similar characteristics and solutions. This paper applies a methodology for identifying HAT patterns to an advanced cockpit project.

In many complex industrial systems, a team works together on digital systems. Team members need to gather information efficiently to maintain mutual awareness and do well in dealing with what may happen in the system. This research studies the effect of speech display in mutual awareness tools on team mutual awareness, individual performance, mental workload and team performance in simulated emergent diagnosis tasks of nuclear power plants at different task complexity levels. An experiment was conducted with 48 subjects (24 teams). Every team completed two scenarios. The results showed that speech display improved team mutual awareness in the low-complexity scenario. However, the teams without speech display did better in analyzing the accident than the teams with speech display in the low-complexity scenario. Furthermore, the teams with speech display were under higher workload.

The objective of this paper is to present a new adaptive automation concept which (1) addresses the still open human factors problems with automation from a team centred perspective and (2), as part of this, offers a new ‘team’ centred approach to solving these problems. In so doing, this paper poses questions about what it means to work in a team, what kind of expertise a third crew member (i.e. automation) offers, and how team members might share information about their state, intentions and actions. In elucidating this new automation concept, this paper introduces new role/work practice concepts for pilots, and a potential roadmap for adaptive automation and single crew operations.

Nowadays, a new technological and industrial revolution is under gestation and the labor division as well as competition division is re-shaping. Meanwhile, the industrial robot has become the one contested by all high-end equipment field throughout the world. How to introduce emotion design into the robot will inevitably become a power weapon for robots shinning out in competition. Human beings have emotional appeals, and the emotional effect ignited based on product functional structure, material form, user aesthetic sense as well as experience, and the cross-over study among user emotional appeals, psychology, physiology and design will become front topics in the industrial design research field. No matter perceptual engineering or emotional design, they are mainly responsible for the scientific recognition and adoption of ambiguous perceptual or emotional factors appeared in the course of creation, which aim to try the utmost to solve the emotional problems via scientific approaches, and change the situation that people cannot scientifically as well as accurately deal with emotional problems based on the experience and feeling of designers. So, the primary problem to solve emotional recognition is how to scientifically and effectively construct the perceptual intention space of products. This paper carries out scientific research on the special filed industrial robot based on the research of constructing perceptual intention space, trying unremitt8ing efforts to know the most scientific and effective perceptual intention space. The model construction includes vocabulary acquisition, selection and establishment to determine the key elements of users and experts. The main task of perceptual vocabulary acquisition is to widely collect the perceptual intention of industrial robot purchasers and users and personal interview as well as questionnaire is adopted; the selection stage is to carry out hierarchical clustering and simplification of the vulgar, similar and opposite words and the KJ is adopted; the establishment stage is to refine and determine perceptual words based on experts counseling and refinement experiment (the experiment approach is to integrate the online questionnaire and field investigation), which cannot only help to have a good knowledge of the emotional appeals, perceptual intention vocabularies recognized by users but also make up for the inner voice of users. To conclude, this paper innovatively comes up with the idea of perceptual intention space construction model of industrial robots based on ‘users and experts’ appealing.

Astronauts often experience disorientation when floating inside their spacecraft due to the lack of gravity. Previous research showed that the intra-vehicular orientation performance correlated with human spatial ability, but paid less attention to the visual cues in the environment. In this study, an experiment was conducted to explore the role of visual cues on spatial orientation performance inside a virtual space station module. Results implicated that visual cues might help in three-dimensional space orientation, but its effect varied between different spatial ability groups. People with low spatial ability might depend more on visual cues for orientation whereas people with high spatial ability could be independent of visual cues in spatial orientation. This finding reveals the effect of visual cues for orientation inside the spacecraft and provides useful guide for prefight orientation training.

Our everyday life is full of interruptions, which cause problems in different situations. Therefore, efficient management of interruptions is a natural part of our daily activity, and we humans are experts at managing task switching and interruptions. Efficient management of interruptions is required in many tasks and domains such as in health care, aviation, car driving and office work. This paper focusses on control room (CR) operator work in nuclear power plants. CR operators have to manage interruptions in various plant states, and sometimes interruptions cause problems in their work. This paper is divided into two major parts: the first part is a short literature review of effects of multitasking and interruptions in work settings; the second part presents some experimental results of multitasking and interruption management during simulated accidents. Some suggestions are given to improve interruption and multitasking management in safety-critical domains.

Since safety inspection safeguards robustness of the construction projects, the cognitive issues of safety inspectors requires more understanding, catering improvement of management processes and policies. Researchers on safety management suggested that even though with the help of comprehensive checklist, inspectors were still prone to missing observation of critical risks during inspection. However, few of them clarified the nature of missing observations, as well as providing effective solutions with empirical support. This study aims at summarizing the pattern of missing observations during inspection from the perspective of cognitive psychology. A causal model of missing observation was established, a practical measure was proposed and verified through an experiment using eye-tracking device. The results revealed that, excessive inspection contents and ambiguity in description of checklist will increase the cognitive-control load of inspectors and results in observation miss. And a procedure-oriented checklist might be an effective solution to such defects.

Human errors are widely-accepted to be a major contributor to incidents and accidents in complex, safety-critical systems. Human reliability is influenced by individual, organizational, and environmental factors, which are called as performance shaping factors (PSFs). Identifying and managing PSFs are important for quantifying human error probability in human reliability analysis (HRA) and preventing human errors in main control rooms (MCRs) of nuclear power plants (NPPs). This study proposes a conceptualization framework for PSFs to identify and organize PSFs in MCRs of NPPs. It describes PSFs at three levels, components, factors (i.e., dimensions), and indicators. The expected result is the full-set PSF model for MCRs of NPPs. The future study is to weight and rank the PSFs from this full-set PSF model and to identify the elite-set PSF model with key PSFs to inform the HRA quantitative analysis.

Elicitation of requirements is critical for the conformance of a system. However, collecting user information and deriving it into unambiguous and verifiable design requirements present a challenge. Therefore non-functional design requirements are usually ended up with ambiguous statements like easy to use. Within the framework of this problem, this paper presents a user research conducted at the early stage of the development process of an electronic warfare system’s hand terminal. As a result; the implicit user demands on system functions, the specifications of the hand terminal should provide to its users were collected from the stakeholders’ perspective and the research data were clarified in a way guiding designers to define design requirements and realize the final design.

We describe the development of a serious game designed to illustrate the impact of a supervisory control technology. The technology is designed to help human operators deliver better training experiences in simulation. It automates low-level control tasks, thus reducing operator workload. The serious game embeds the technology and simulation in a different context. In the game, the player directs several aircraft in a simulation toward specific geographic points while avoiding “obstacles” and obeying “speed limits” in certain areas. The player’s score is maximized when the player adjusts aircraft flight to the constraints, which change dynamically during gameplay. The supervisory control is employed as an “autopilot” to enable aircraft to automatically obey geographical restrictions. Users can play the game with and without the supervisory control technology. These modes allow the players to experience directly both overload and the workload reduction enabled by supervisory control. We contend that direct experience with a technology such as this can supplement design reviews and empirical piloting, helping stakeholders gain a more complete perspective of the desired operational role of the technology.

This paper reports on an experimental study on user interface design in complex electronics manufacturing systems to measure the difference between ecological interface design (EID) and user-centered design (UCD). Based on cognitive psychology and human factors theory, we conducted a comparative research study. Prototypes of the interface were designed based on the EID and UCD which were undergoing NASA-TLX to evaluation the subjective workload of the users. The main findings of this study were as follows: (1) we found that the ecological interface design and user-centered design had significant differences in each levels; (2) the ecological interface design has a significant better effect on subjective workload compare to user-centered design in the complex electronics manufacturing systems (P < 0.05). The research results can help interface designers to deeply understand the difference between EID and UCD, which could guide the design of user interface in the complex industrial scenarios.

This study linked aircrew risk-taking behavior to aviation loss, and in this relationship it examined the moderating role of phase-of-flight. First, it developed a measurement model in view of prior accident causation theories and findings of 715 general aviation accidents in Pakistan over a period spanning 2000–2014. Later, it espoused this model for hypotheses testing using original data from 224 randomly chosen accidents and assessed the model through structural path analysis. Results indicated a positive relationship between aircrew risk-taking behavior and aviation loss, and significant moderating role of phase-of-flight.

Astronauts may need to face a lot of complex operations and the emergency in the future space station mission. The manual rendezvous and docking image recognition training method was established based on meta-cognition in this study.In this research, they were analyzed about the cognitive task and the image recognition process of rendezvous and docking mission. The meta-cognitive question list which help subjects to monitor their own cognitive process was designed depending on the difficulty of image recognition, then establish the meta-cognitive auxiliary training method.By implementing metacognitive training, the following research conclusions were obtained: Metacognitive levels and self-learning results of the RVD Pictorial Handbook Test were positively correlated: Metacognitive training could effectively enhance participants’ metacognitive levels and Metacognitive training could effectively enhance participants’ image recognition abilities.

The purpose of this pilot study is to investigate the differences of eye movements among three different flight backgrounds. There were eleven participants (2 military pilots with average 2,250 flying hours, 6 commercial pilots with average 5,360 flying hours, and 3 novices). All participants wear a mobile eye tracker during the experiment operating a Boeing 747 flight simulator for landing. The eye tracker recorded all participants’ eye movement data automatically. The average values of the latency of first fixation (LFF) and the total contact time (TCT) for five regions of interest (ROIs) are used to examine proposed hypotheses. The findings include: (1) participants of different flight backgrounds have different sequences of viewing ROIs; (2) participants of military pilots and novices spent most of time viewing the outside of cockpit (ROI-3); however, participants of commercial pilots spent most of time viewing the Primary Flight Display (ROI-1). Current research findings might be applied for developing conversion training for military pilots conversed to civil airlines pilots. The fundamental reasons of why pilots viewing ROIs in different sequence and spending significant different time on the ROIs needed to be studied further in the future.

This paper describes the design and development of an ecological display to aid pilots in the recovery of an In-Flight Loss of Control event due to a Stall (ILOC-S). The Trajectory Recovery System (TRS) provides a stimulus $$ \to $$ response interaction between the pilot and the primary flight display. This display is intended to provide directly perceivable and actionable information of the aerodynamic performance state information and the requisite recovery guidance representation. In an effort to reduce cognitive tunneling, TRS mediates the interaction between pilot and aircraft display systems by deploying cognitive countermeasures that remove display representations unnecessary to the recovery task. Reported here, are the development and initial human centered design activities of a functional and integrated TRS display in a 737 flight-training device.

Current research investigates automation feedback design compared with a potential design solution that may increase pilot’s situation awareness of the Flight Mode Annunciators (FMAs) to reduce pilot workload and improve human-automation coordination. The research tools include an Eye Tracker and B747 flight simulator. This research evaluated two types of FMAs; a proposed glareshield mounted FMAs against the baseline FMA design mounted on the Primary Flight Display using an objective eye tracker. There are 19 participants including professional and private pilots and aerospace engineers. The results suggest that proposed glareshield design is the better design compared with the baseline design which demonstrated larger mean pupil sizes related to the higher workload. A design solution was proposed that moved the FMAs to a MCP position, taking into account EASA and FAA design guidance, as well as several design principles including positioning to increase salience and the proximity compatibility principle. The results of the experiment found that FMAs on the MCP could increase pilot SA and reduced the mean fixation duration compared to the PFD position. Although the study used a small sample size, it demonstrates the value of further research to evaluate the proposed design.

Pilots build and maintain situation awareness based on their interaction with the world around them. This interaction includes a complex and dynamic series of tasks including running checklists, reading instruments and displays, looking out of the window, or listening to the radios. However, since the quality and quantity of information derived from each interaction is not well known, cockpit designers can only have an abstract understanding of how much situation awareness their system imparts to the human operators. This paper examines the opinions of pilots regarding how performing cockpit tasks contribute towards gaining situation awareness. Twenty-one military aviators were asked to rate 19 generic cockpit tasks based on how they contribute to or degrade situation awareness. This research shows that modern avionics, such as the Heads-Up Display, Multi-Function Display, and other sensors can provide strong positive situation awareness, but depending on the mission phase and other factors, they may not be significantly more advantageous than their analog counterparts.

Upcoming cockpit designs will face new human-machine challenges related to an increasing number of pilot assistant and information systems. New cockpit designs aim to decreasing the visual workload to create free capacity in the human visual channel, which increases the information flow and lowers stress of the flight crews. At present time, none of them use spacial audio as an additional information channel. Current research considered mostly setups that are not applicable in state-of-the-art cockpits. The paper presents an experiment with a 3D audio system and a normal aviation like stereo headset. The localization performance of 23 participants under 4 different settings was calculated. Participants moved a digital ball with their head to mark the localized sound angle. The importance of head coupled movement become clear with a higher localization performance. The influence of sound frequency for warning sounds vs. human speech was not as high as expected.

This article describes a design pattern for human-autonomy teaming in which a human operator is supported by two cognitive agents. The first agent automates delegated tasks as a subordinate in a hierarchical relationship. The second agent serves as an assistant system. Its task is the mitigation, i.e. prevention and correction, of human erroneous behavior. Error-correcting automation can be prone to complacency effects. The assistant system is therefore specifically designed to avoid potential out-of-the-loop phenomena. The design pattern is implemented for the use case of unmanned air reconnaissance using a single-operator ground control station. The results of an experimental campaign confirm the validity of the approach.

The auditory warning is one of the most important information in cockpit. To study the effects of auditory warnings to human capability of receiving information, this paper describes the test about the effects of various warning features on the information receiving performance of the testers. Testers in the laboratory environment finish the mission for determination of 24 warning tones combined by two volumes (65 dB (A), 75 dB (A)), three frequencies (700 Hz, 1,200 Hz, 1,700 Hz), and four inter-onset intervals (100, 150, 300 and 600 ms). This test considers the perceived urgency judgment and reaction time of the tester as the study data that experiences the comparative analysis and variance analysis after being paired. The study results indicate that the sound volume influences the perceived urgency judgment significantly (p < 0.05) and impacts the reaction time greatly (p < 0.01). Sound frequencies also effect the perceived urgency judgment significantly (p < 0.05) and so do the inter-onset intervals in both the perceived urgency judgment and reaction time (p < 0.01). In conclusion, the greater the volume is, the higher the frequency is, the shorter the inter-onset interval is, and the higher the perceived urgency is while the greater the volume is, the shorter the inter-onset interval is, and the shorter the reaction time becomes.

A well designed flight deck with full consideration of ergonomic aspect has a significant effect on aircraft safety. Since cockpit is a complicated system, it is necessary to have a comprehensive evaluation of flight deck ergonomic design during the design and certification process in order to grasp the overall ergonomic design quality. The determination of indicator weights and aggregation of indicator evaluation values are key steps of comprehensive evaluation. However, most of existing methods lack a sufficient consideration of uncertainty of subjective judgment and interdependence between indicators. Therefore, Delphi-order relation analysis (ORA) method and improved radar chart were proposed in this paper to address these two problems respectively. A feedback mechanism is introduced in Delphi-ORA method to control the limitation of expert’s knowledge structure and experience. The correlation coefficient is incorporated in the improved radar chart to reflect the interdependence between indicators.

As the highly development of complexity and automation level of human-machine system in airplane cockpit, flight information shown in display and control system became diversified and complicated, which meant tremendous information was required to be simultaneously processed for pilot’s sake. Therefore, great information would provide with more comprehensive data support while raise higher requirement of interface design of cockpit display. This paper concentrated on pilot situational awareness (SA) modeling based on human-machine interaction in cockpit system and developed theoretical application research in three connected parts: SA modeling based on attention resource allocation, SA modeling based on cognitive process analysis and SA modeling based on interface evaluation.

The objective of this research is to study the eye movement patterns of pilots in landing process by analyzing and comparing the eye movement data of experts and novices so as to reveal their cognitive process of information processing in the final landing stage. Ten experts who have flown above 1000 h and fourteen novices whose flight hours were between 200 to 400 participated the experiment. All subjects’ task was to implement a landing task according visual flight rules in no wind and shinning day and the landing task was completed with a high fidelity flight simulator. Eye movement data and flight parameters data were recorded during the experiment. The result showed that there was obvious difference of flight performance between experts and novices. The course deviation, roll angel and pitch angel of experts were better compared to that of novices. And the land course of experts was also better than that of novices. It could be found by the comparison of eye movement index between experts and novices that there were obvious differences of six eye movement index. Expert showed shorter fixation time, smaller pupil size changes, lager scanning range, faster scan velocity, greater scan frequency and greater fixation frequency. So the conclusion can be made that there is obvious differences between experts and novices not only in flight performance but also in eye movement pattern; the scanning pattern is related to flight performance and effective scanning pattern is related to better flight performance; so the measurement of eye movement pattern can be used to evaluate and forecast flight performance and thus to guide the training.