What avionics engineers should know about pilots and automation

There has been great interest lately in automation issues, spurred partly by accidents and incidents attributed to automation factors, and partly by a recognition that automation related problems can be both highly subtle and very dangerous. One of the reasons underlying automation-related problems is the relatively indiscriminate application of automation based on technological availability rather than operator need. This has placed system operators in roles that are poorly suited to human capabilities. A more productive approach to automation and humans would recognize the need to maintain appropriate roles for the human operator, the need to match automation functionality to operator tasks, the need for the human interface to make automation functions highly visible to the operator, and the potential for operator over- and under-reliance on the automation.