Conference on Human Impact and Application of Autonomic Computing Systems

Human Supervisory Control of Dynamic Systems Abstract: Over recent decades computers have invaded many large scale dynamic systems - such as commercial aircraft and air traffic control, nuclear and chemical processing plants, and robotic systems used in space and under sea - that were previously controlled manually. The human has become a supervisor of lower level intelligent agents, becoming more a goal-setter and planner, teacher, monitor, intervener and evaluator than continuous operator. The talk will review how the the human-machine relationship has changed, the new kinds of errors that occur, and how system reliability is both enhanced and diminished. Levels of automation, trust, mental workload, situation awareness and other popular but yet ill defined measures will be discussed in this context.     Thomas B. Sheridan - Bio  Thomas B. Sheridan  Ford Professor of Engineering and Applied Psychology Emeritus, MIT, and  Senior Research Fellow, DoT Volpe National Transportation Systems Center  sheridan@mit.edu  Web Sites  http://www-me.mit.edu/people/personal/sheridan.htm Biography Dr. Sheridan has served on the MIT faculty in the Departments of Mechnical Engineering and Aeronautics/Astronautics for most of his career. He has authored or coauthored five books and over 200 papers in areas of aviation, nuclear, highway systems as well as robotics, arms control and medicine. He served as president of both IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society and the Human Factors Society and is a fellow of both. He received the National Engineering Award of the Amer. Assoc. of Engineering Societies and the Oldenburger Medal of ASME. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.