Human factors play an important role for controlling Complex and Safety Critical Systems, since human-made mistakes are often the main source of system failures. While the number of human-induced errors can often be reduced by training, the limit of human physiological capabilities must be taken into account. A widely accepted design principle is that the technical system must adapt to the user capabilities in a way that the required overall system performance can be reached and that safety-critical situation can be avoided. 

Two well-known approaches are functional task decomposition and interface design. Furthermore, dynamical system design methods are required for designing the human-machine-interaction with the human individuals in the closed-loop system. Such an approach is the modeling and the decomposition of dynamical human behavior along the technical system structuring. This approach reflects the time constants of human and technical behavior. The technical system is decomposed according to the time constants of basic behaviors into behavioral levels interacting with each other using nested feedback loop structures. An appropriate interaction of a human user with the technical system can be reached by coupling the human behavior to the technical behavior on the corresponding levels using specific interfaces. Taking the time constants of the human behavior into account the overall performance of the interaction can be optimized. 

Besides system structuring the research questions are directed to dynamic human behavior modeling, Interface Design and System Adaptation in Realtime. Prototypically, the approaches for human-adaptive technology interaction are applied to medical and rehabilitation robots, unmanned air vehicle systems and dependable assistance systems.

 

back to top