Robotics and Human Factors: Current Status and Future Prospects

Abstract

Robotics is a new technology domain that human factors scientists and practitioners should enter, to represent the human role in automation. Robots have varying functional capabilities, applications, and rationales. From the perspective of human factors engineering, the most important question is the division of labor between robots and humans. Humans participate in robot systems in nine activities: surveillance, intervention, maintenance, backup, input, output, supervision, inspection, and synergy. Additional concerns include hardware and software design of interfaces with operators, procedure development, accident prevention, and training. There have been a few human factors studies, including some by the Army, Air Force, and Navy (in teleoperators), but more are needed, drawing in part on research in artificial intelligence, to support robotics for industrial productivity and military requirements.