Differentiation of Input-Output Relations to Facilitate User's Correct Awareness of Operating Mode of Automated Control System

摘要

This study investigates a practical guideline on human-machine interaction design to facilitate human operator's correct awareness of the actual operating state of an automated control system in their joint activity. Based on the comprehension that a human being is a "proactive" agent who would affect the external world to obtain new cues to foster its understandings, the mapping structures between the human operator's input operations and the machine's response behaviors, i.e., the input-output relations, may be one of the dominant characters that can explain the operator's awareness of the machine's operating state. From this perspective, we speculate that different control modes with similar input-output relations should be easily mixed up with one another since interactions mediated by those relations would intimate a same mode. This hypothesis was verified through an experiment using a driving simulator that examined drivers on their recognitions of the operating mode of ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control) while driving with it. Another experiment confirmed that a human-machine interaction design to differentiate modes in their input-output relations could successfully reduce mode confusion errors.