ABSTRACT
Automation represents one of the major trends of the 20th century. In many cases automation has provided the desired benefits and has extended system functionality well beyond existing human capabilities. Situation awareness, a person's mental model of the world around him or her is central to effective decision making and control in dynamic systems. This construct can be severely impacted by the implementation of automation. Complacency—overreliance on automation—is one major factor associated with a lack of vigilance in monitoring automation. Monitoring problems have also been found with systems that have a high incidence of false alarms, leading to a lack of trust in the automation. In addition to vigilance problems, the fact that operators are passive observers of automation instead of active processors of information may add to their problems in detecting the need for manual intervention and in reorienting themselves to the state of the system in order to do so.
