Human factors of flight-deck automation: Report on a NASA-industry workshop

Abstract

With the advent of microprocessor technology, it has become possible to automate many of the functions on the flight deck of commercial aircraft that were previously performed manually. However, it is not clear whether these functions should be automated, taking into consideration various human factors issues. A NASA-industry workshop was held to identify the human factors issues related to flight-deck automation which would require research for resolution. The scope of automation, the benefits of automation and automation-induced problems were discussed, and,a list of potential research topics was generated by the participants. This report summarizes the workshop discussions and presents the questions developed at that time. While the workshop was specifically directed towards flight-deck automation, the issues raised and the research questions generated are more generally applicable to most complex interactive systems