A Distracted Scientist: The Life and Contributions of John Senders.

Objective: To provide an evaluative and personal overview of the life and contributions of Professor John Senders and to introduce this Special Issue dedicated to his memory.

Background: John Senders made many profound contributions to HF/E. These various topics are exemplified by the range of papers which compose the Special Issue.

A review of recent research in social robotics.

Research in social robotics has a different emphasis from research in robotics for factory, military, hospital, home (vacuuming), aerial (drone), space, and undersea applications. A social robot is one whose purpose is to serve a person in a caring interaction rather than to perform a mechanical task. Both because of its newness and because of its narrower psychological rather than technological emphasis, research in social robotics tends currently to be concentrated in a single journal and single annual conference.

Individual Differences in Attributes of Trust in Automation: Measurement and Application to System Design.

Computer-based automation of sensing, analysis, memory, decision-making, and control in industrial, business, medical, scientific, and military applications is becoming increasingly sophisticated, employing various techniques of artificial intelligence for learning, pattern recognition, and computation. Research has shown that proper use of automation is highly dependent on operator trust. As a result the topic of trust has become an active subject of research and discussion in the applied disciplines of human factors and human-systems integration.

Extending Three Existing Models to Analysis of Trust in Automation: Signal Detection, Statistical Parameter Estimation, and Model-Based Control.

Objective: The objective is to propose three quantitative models of trust in automation.

Background: Current trust-in-automation literature includes various definitions and frameworks, which are reviewed.

Method: This research shows how three existing models, namely those for signal detection, statistical parameter estimation calibration, and internal model-based control, can be revised and reinterpreted to apply to trust in automation useful for human-system interaction design.

The Intricacies of User Adjustments of Alerting Thresholds.

Objective: We address the question of necessary conditions for users to adjust system settings, such as alarm thresholds, correctly.

Background: When designing systems, we need to decide which system functions users should control. Giving control to users empowers them, but users must have the relevant information and the ability to adjust settings correctly for their control to be beneficial.

A Closed-Loop Model of Operator Visual Attention, Situation Awareness, and Performance Across Automation Mode Transitions.

Objective: This article describes a closed-loop, integrated human-vehicle model designed to help understand the underlying cognitive processes that influenced changes in subject visual attention, mental workload, and situation awareness across control mode transitions in a simulated human-in-the-loop lunar landing experiment.

Background: Control mode transitions from autopilot to manual flight may cause total attentional demands to exceed operator capacity. Attentional resources must be reallocated and reprioritized, which can increase the average uncertainty in the operator's estimates of low-priority system states.

Human-Robot Interaction: Status and Challenges.

Objective: The current status of human-robot interaction (HRI) is reviewed, and key current research challenges for the human factors community are described.

Background: Robots have evolved from continuous human-controlled master-slave servomechanisms for handling nuclear waste to a broad range of robots incorporating artificial intelligence for many applications and under human supervisory control.

Methods: This mini-review describes HRI developments in four application areas and what are the challenges for human factors research.

Musings on Models and the Genius of Jens Rasmussen.

Two well-known Rasmussen models, the skill-rule knowledge (SRK) paradigm and the abstraction hierarchy, are compared to well-known models in both physics and psychology. Some of the latter are quantitative and make explicit predictions; some are qualitative, such as the Rasmussen models, being more useful for provoking thought about the relevant issues. Each of the Rasmussen models is evaluated with respect to six-attribute model taxonomy recently introduced by the author.

Evaluating models in systems ergonomics with a taxonomy of model attributes.

A model, as the term is used here, is a way of representing knowledge for the purpose of thinking, communicating to others, or implementing decisions as in system analysis, design or operations. It can be said that to the extent that we can model some aspect of nature we understand it. Models can range from fleeting mental images to highly refined mathematical equations of computer algorithms that precisely predict physical events.

Risk, human error, and system resilience: fundamental ideas.

Objective: I review and critique basic ideas of both traditional error/risk analysis and the newer and contrasting paradigm of resilience engineering.

Background: Analysis of human error has matured and been applied over the past 50 years by human factors engineers, whereas the resilience engineering paradigm is relatively new.

Method: Fundamental ideas and examples of human factors applications of each approach are presented and contrasted.

Making the operating room of the future safer.

There is an increasing demand for interventions to improve patient safety, but there is limited data to guide such reform. In particular, because much of the existing research is outcome-driven, we have a limited understanding of the factors and process variations that influence safety in the operating room. In this article, we start with an overview of safety terminology, suggesting a model that emphasizes "safety" rather than "error" and that can encompass the spectrum of events occurring in the operating room.

A prospective study of patient safety in the operating room.

Background: To better understand the operating room as a system and to identify system features that influence patient safety, we performed an analysis of operating room patient care using a prospective observational technique.

Methods: A multidisciplinary team comprised of human factors experts and surgeons conducted prospective observations of 10 complex general surgery cases in an academic hospital. Minute-to-minute observations were recorded in the field, and later coded and analyzed.

Driver distraction from a control theory perspective.

Distraction from cell phones, navigation systems, information/entertainment systems, and other driver-interactive devices now finding their way into the highway vehicles is a serious national safety concern. However, driver distraction is neither well defined nor well understood. In an effort to bring some better definition to the problem, a framework is proposed based on the ideas of control theory.