The Challenges of Partially Automated Driving.

AUTONOMOUS CARS PROMISE to give us back the time we spend in traffic, improve the flow of traffic, reduce accidents, deaths, and injuries, and make personal car travel possible for everyone regardless of their abilities or condition. But despite impressive demonstrations and technical advances, many obstacles remain on the road to fully autonomous cars. Overcoming the challenges to enabling autonomous cars to safely operate in highly complex driving situations may take some time.

Vigilance impossible: Diligence, distraction, and daydreaming all lead to failures in a practical monitoring task.

In laboratory studies of vigilance, participants watch for unusual events in a "sit and stare" fashion as their performance typically declines over time. But watch keepers in practical settings seldom approach monitoring in such simplistic ways and controlled environments. We observed airline pilots performing routine monitoring duties in the cockpit.

The retention of manual flying skills in the automated cockpit.

Objective: The aim of this study was to understand how the prolonged use of cockpit automation is affecting pilots' manual flying skills.

Background: There is an ongoing concern about a potential deterioration of manual flying skills among pilots who assume a supervisory role while cockpit automation systems carry out tasks that were once performed by human pilots.

Method: We asked 16 airline pilots to fly routine and nonroutine flight scenarios in a Boeing 747-400 simulator while we systematically varied the level of automation that they used, graded their performance, and probed them about what they were thinking about as they flew.

Thoughts in flight: automation use and pilots' task-related and task-unrelated thought.

Objective: The objective was to examine the relationship between cockpit automation use and task-related and task-unrelated thought among airline pilots.

Background: Studies find that cockpit automation can sometimes relieve pilots of tedious control tasks and afford them more time to think ahead. Paradoxically, automation has also been shown to lead to lesser awareness.

The effectiveness of airline pilot training for abnormal events.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of airline pilot training for abnormal in-flight events.

Background: Numerous accident reports describe situations in which pilots responded to abnormal events in ways that were different from what they had practiced many times before. One explanation for these missteps is that training and testing for these skills have become a highly predictable routine for pilots who arrive to the training environment well aware of what to expect.

Airline pilots' knowledge and beliefs about over-the-counter medications.

Introduction: Toxicological studies of accident pilots frequently find the presence of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs. While many of these drugs are approved for use while flying, others are not. To better understand how pilots come to use unapproved OTC drugs, this study explored psychological and behavioral factors that might influence pilots' decisions about using OTC drug products.

Perceived vs. measured effects of advanced cockpit systems on pilot workload and error: are pilots' beliefs misaligned with reality?

Four types of advanced cockpit systems were tested in an in-flight experiment for their effect on pilot workload and error. Twelve experienced pilots flew conventional cockpit and advanced cockpit versions of the same make and model airplane. In both airplanes, the experimenter dictated selected combinations of cockpit systems for each pilot to use while soliciting subjective workload measures and recording any errors that pilots made.