Human performance issues in the design of future Air Force systems

For future Air Force systems, the question is not whether to introduce automation, but rather what to automate and how to implement it to optimize the use of human and system resources. There is a continuum of levels of automation ranging from the straightforward use of integrative displays of existing information to replacing human operators with robots. This paper is concerned not with automation decisions per se, but with the design and analysis questions relating to human performance that are raised by these various levels of automation. At the simplest levels one is concerned with the design of integrative displays for direct interpretation by the crew. At intermediate levels one is concerned with the design of interfaces to the expert systems that are providing recommendations to the crew. At the level of robotics there are issues concerning scope and depth of supervisory control that the crew should provide. Although AMRL has been addressing such issues for many of the last 50 years, the need for analytic approaches, for integrative theories, and for cost-effective empirical evaluation tools has never been greater.