Evaluation of Information Quality and Automation Visibility in Information Automation on the Flight Deck

Abstract

<p>An empirical study was conducted to evaluate human factors issues related to the automation visibility and information quality of an information automation system. Information automation is responsible for the collection, processing, analysis, and presentation of information to the flightcrew. Previous analysis had identified a set of characteristics particularly applicable to aircraft flight deck information automation and associated human factors issues. Air transport pilots interacted with an example information automation system in ways that allowed investigation of the information automation characteristics of automation visibility and information quality. The evaluation found that poor information quality appeared to be difficult for participants to detect, even when they were presented with the highest automation visibility level. In the times that they did not successfully compensate, participants tended to over-trust the automation, so when information was missing and they were under high workload, they chose the top plan suggested by the automation even though it was not the truly best plan. Trust in automation was reduced by low information quality, but compensated for by increased automation visibility.</p>