Trust in Automation
Automation is becoming increasingly prevalent throughout work environments and is utilized in industries such as aviation, automotive, and healthcare. The implementation of automation has allowed operations to grow larger and move faster, effectively extending human capabilities for performance and safety. While automation provides many benefits, it is often problematic because people fail to rely on it appropriately. The interaction between people and technology is social; therefore, trust influences reliance on automation. This human-system relationship, and how trust mediates the relationship, is a concept known as trust in automation. It is important to understand this concept in order to design safe and efficient systems.
Several CHAAT studies have investigated how trust in automation is a factor in the domain of air traffic control. Higham, Vu et al. (2011) investigated if ATCo trust in automation influenced performance, workload, and situation awareness after completion of a trust training course for automated tools, reporting that lower workload and lower situation awareness ratings were given to scenarios in which all aircraft were compatible with automated tools. Mirchi et. al. (2015) investigated differences between subjective trust scales used to examine air traffic controller (ATCo) trust in automation levels and the relationship of these trust metrics to ATCo behaviors. Miramontes et al. (2015) examined if personality traits influence the student’s likelihood to trust automation, finding that people with higher levels of emotional stability reported higher levels of trust in automation.
References
Higham, T. M., Vu, K. P. L., Miles, J., Strybel, T. Z., & Battiste, V. (2013). Training air traffic controller trust in automation within a nextgen environment. In Human Interface and the Management of Information. Information and Interaction for Health, Safety, Mobility and Complex Environments (pp. 76-84). Heidelberg, Berlin: Springer.
Miramontes, A., Tesoro, A., Trujillo, Y., Barraza, E., Keeler, J., Boudreau, A., Strybel, T. Z., & Vu, K.-P. L. (2015). Training student air traffic controllers to trust automation. In AHFE 2015 Conference Proceedings, (pp. 56 – 61). Netherlands: Elsevier.
Mirchi, T., Vu, K.-P. L., Miles, J., Sturre, L., Curtis, S., & Strybel, T. Z. (2015). Air traffic controller trust in automation in NextGen. In AHFE 2015 Conference Proceedings (pp. 624 – 630). Netherlands: Elsevier
