Human-Centered Automation Design: An Application to In-Cab Rail Technology
Introduction of automated systems in locomotive cabs often changes the scope and complexity of the human crew’s work. With appropriate human-automation interactions, humans and automation may operate as a joint cognitive system with each contributing to its capabilities and strengths to achieve the highest level of efficiency and safety. However, there has been limited work in human automation function allocation across all human actors in the rail domain. Existing studies focus primarily on the vigilance of one crew member under varying levels of automation of a single task. The contribution of this research is in providing a novel methodology to design and evaluate new roles of humans and automation systems in freight rail systems which broadly considers all the in-cab operators – the engineer and conductor. This paper presents a novel methodology from the Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) framework to compare the effectiveness of function allocations and develop a prototype with new automation functionalities. The model and the protototype were validated through a human-in-the-loop experiment, and preliminary results are shared. Initial results are encouraging, and indicate the effectiveness of the modeling process.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AR070 Standing Committee on Railroad Operational Safety.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Brooks, James D
- Subrahmaniyan, Neeraja
- Miller, Bradford W
- Liu, Andrew M
- Groshong, Hannah
- Oman, Chuck
- Houpt, Paul
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
- Date: 2017
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 18p
- Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Automation; Cabs (Vehicle compartments); Cognition; Conductors (Trains); Human machine systems; Railroad engineers; Railroad safety; Train crews
- Subject Areas: Railroads; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01626387
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 17-05900
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Feb 23 2017 2:56PM