A Knowledge-based Treatment of Human-Automation Systems

TL;DR

This paper applies formal reasoning about knowledge to model and analyze complex human-automation systems, enhancing understanding of agent knowledge and improving system design in critical domains.

Contribution

It introduces a formal knowledge-based modeling approach for human-automation systems, demonstrating its effectiveness through a case study and discussing future research directions.

Findings

Formal model of human-automation knowledge successfully applied

Analysis validates the importance of reasoning about agent knowledge

Potential applications in aviation and human-robot teams

Abstract

In a supervisory control system the human agent knowledge of past, current, and future system behavior is critical for system performance. Being able to reason about that knowledge in a precise and structured manner is central to effective system design. In this paper we introduce the application of a well-established formal approach to reasoning about knowledge to the modeling and analysis of complex human-automation systems. An intuitive notion of knowledge in human-automation systems is sketched and then cast as a formal model. We present a case study in which the approach is used to model and reason about a classic problem from the human-automation systems literature; the results of our analysis provide evidence for the validity and value of reasoning about complex systems in terms of the knowledge of the system agents. To conclude, we discuss research directions that will extend this approach, and note several systems in the aviation and human-robot team domains that are of particular interest.