A Cooperative Automation Concept for User-oriented Support of Air Target Identification

Abstract

For over 40 years science in a variety of domains has conducted an impressive amount of research in the field of assistance and automation concepts, which apply human factors and needs in the design stage of cooperative and cognitive technical systems. Cooperative automation is an approach that tries to keep the user in the control loop by means of a continuous interaction during task execution. Cooperative automation aims to support the harmonization of the actor's activities (user and automation) in a human-machine-system. To enable this, both the internal (processing and computation) and external (communications and interfaces) design of the automation has to be compatible with human competence. This contribution addresses the key features of cooperative automation. These features have been used for creating a design space, which can be used as method repository in order to develop assistance systems based on the cognitive capabilities of the human. The key elements are represented as dimensions of the design space. Corresponding theories and methods are discussed. The design process for a cognitive and cooperative assistance system based on the dimensions of the design space are described. The developed Cognitive and Cooperative Assistance System (COGAS), has been implemented in the domain of air target identification on German naval ships. An evaluation of COGAS has been conducted with naval operators in order to verify its operability and to optimize and extend the COGAS functionality. The results show that COGAS improves the operator's performance in terms of increasing the amount of correct decisions and accelerating the identification process without increasing the operator's stress level. In addition it was found that COGAS helps to enhance the situational awareness due to the workload optimization.