Citation

Inagaki T. Int. J. Ind. Ergonomics 2003; 31(3): 169-174.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

It is often said "humans must have final authority over the automation," especially when human-centered automation is sought. It is not wise to claim that automation is perfect, and people may desire to keep ultimate authority over the automation. However, this paper tries to argue with some examples in transport and process control why it is necessary to relax the constraint that "human must be maintained as the final authority over the automation" in human supervisory control. It is shown that the final authority for decision and action may be traded flexibly and dynamically between humans and automation, and that there can be cases in which automation may be given the final authority for ensuring the safety of a system.

Relevance to industry: Who must be in authority is one of central issues in human-supervisory control of computerized technical processes, such as aircraft, nuclear power plants. Introduction of highly capable automations has made human-automation interaction significantly complicated. Careful design of authority sharing and trading is necessary for a real human-centered automation.