Automation Challenges of Socio-technical Systems

Paradoxes and Conflicts

Frederic Vanderhaegen, Choubeila Maaoui, Mohamed Sallak, Denis Berdjag, Frederic Vanderhaegen, Choubeila Maaoui, Mohamed Sallak, Denis Berdjag

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786304223
• eBook ISBN: 9781119644507
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Civil Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The challenges of automating socio-technical systems are strongly linked to the strengths and limitations of technical and human resources, such as perceptual characteristics, cooperative capacities, job-sharing arrangements, modeling of human behavior and the contribution of innovative design approaches. Automation Challenges of Socio-technical Systems exposes the difficulties in implementing and sustaining symbiosis between humans and machines in both the short and long terms. Furthermore, it presents innovative solutions for achieving such symbiosis, drawing on skills from cognitive sciences, engineering sciences and the social sciences. It is aimed at researchers, academics and engineers in these fields.

PART 1
Perceptual Capacities

1
Synchronization of Stimuli with Heart Rate: a New Challenge to Control Attentional Dissonances

1.1. Introduction

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye” [DES 43]. This quote is the perfect introduction to this chapter, which contains an approach to evaluating the impact of the synchronization of demands with heart beats in terms of the occurrence of attentional dissonances.

An accident or an incident is often due to a combination of human, technical, environmental or organizational factors. Two levels of gaps are generally envisaged [VAN 03]: a behavioral gap, for example when the actual behavior of a human operator is not as expected, and a situational gap, for example when the true consequences of behavior are not as expected. To simplify these risk analyses, acceptability thresholds are defined in order to determine whether such and such a gap must be processed. Yet, this approach neglects gaps of low amplitude or frequency that could sometimes provide an explanation of the occurrence of some undesirable events. These margins can, in the long term, be associated with dangerous situations.

The concept of dissonance, generated voluntarily or involuntarily, with or without the knowledge of its real or possible consequences, responds to this problem. It allows consideration of imperceptible signals that can generate risks such as these.

The occurrence of a dissonance can be associated with physiological measurements of pain, stress, boredom or fasting, for example [JOU 87]. It is then evaluated from the electrodermal activity, electroencephalographic activity, acids contained in the blood and related to inanition, or blood pressure. Even if the dissonances in terms of personal conviction do not appear to affect the activity of the heart [JOU 87], the impact of heartbeats on certain emotional factors such as stress, joy or surprise has often been a subject of research. On the other hand, only rarely has research related these heart rhythms to attentional factors such as being awake or perception. It is about treating an imperceptible signal that could have an impact on human performance.

This chapter is based on the following assumption: genesis of attentional dissonances can be due to the synchronization of stimuli with heart rate. The first two sections establish a link between different concepts, in other words between human error and dissonance, then between cognitive conflict, attention and attentional dissonance. Following a description of the causes and the evaluations of dissonances, the last two sections describe an exploratory assessment and its results on attentional dissonances, based on the analysis of the heart rate synchronized with the activation of visual and auditory stimuli. The results are promising and make it possible to envisage design of automated systems that are capable of detecting synchronization of this kind and to control any related attentional dissonances.

1.2. From human error to dissonance

Human reliability is defined as the capability of a human operator to correctly carry out their prescribed tasks and additional tasks in compliance with predefined conditions, over a time interval or at a given moment in time, for various evaluation criteria such as safety, production or quality of activity, workload or satisfaction [VAN 17a]. Human error is the complementary factor of this: this is the human capability to incorrectly carry out planned or additional tasks under the same conditions.

More than 70% of accidents are due to human error and 100% of them are directly or indirectly related to human factors [AMA 13]. Retrospective analysis of accidents leads to the identification of the cause of their occurrence. It allows a list to be drawn up of all the factors that have resulted in the accident occurring and can be added to using prospective assessments in order to anticipate all the possible accident scenarios. The factors that can affect human performance or the safety of a system are called PSFs (performance shaping factors) in the field of human reliability analysis. PSFs allow the characteristics of the human operator to be taken into account, as well as the context and environment that affect their performance in a positive or negative way. In comparison to research work into occurrence mechanisms of human errors, PSFs that are most often processed are attention, vigilance and workload [VAN 09, RAC 14, RAN 17]. These prospective or retrospective analyses allow new safety barriers to be set up or adaptation of those already in place.

However, designing a system to support the control of safety in order to reduce a risk is not sufficient; it is also necessary to assess the possible evolutions of its use and the associated risks. For example, the use of an automatic speed control device can generate behavioral deviations such as the creation of new functions of the technical system, the reduction of the distance between vehicles, or the increase in response time or hypovigilance [DUF 14, VAN 14]. Naive reasoning could lead to the development of automated vigilance control systems to reduce these risks of use of other automated systems.

The accident of August 30, 2004 in Rouen [BEA 05] is an example of the limitations of this approach. It was caused by the state of hypovigilance of a driver who went through a red signal and hit the back of a train carriage that was stopped in front of him. In the accident report, it is written: “The automatic driver surveillance system (i.e. the VACMA) of the impacting carriage, although in an operational state and apparently still activated by the driver, was not effective in preventing the accident”. Thus, the driver would be capable of activating these automated ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• PART 1: Perceptual Capacities
• PART 2: Cooperation and Sharing of Tasks
• PART 3: System Reliability
• PART 4: System Modeling and Decision Support
• PART 5 Innovative Design
• Conclusion
• List of Authors
• Index
• End User License Agreement