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Human Research Program Space Human Factors Engineering (SHFE) Standing Review Panel (SRP)The Space Human Factors Engineering (SHFE) Standing Review Panel (SRP) evaluated 22 gaps and 39 tasks in the three risk areas assigned to the SHFE Project. The area where tasks were best designed to close the gaps and the fewest gaps were left out was the Risk of Reduced Safety and Efficiency dire to Inadequate Design of Vehicle, Environment, Tools or Equipment. The areas where there were more issues with gaps and tasks, including poor or inadequate fit of tasks to gaps and missing gaps, were Risk of Errors due to Poor Task Design and Risk of Error due to Inadequate Information. One risk, the Risk of Errors due to Inappropriate Levels of Trust in Automation, should be added. If astronauts trust automation too much in areas where it should not be trusted, but rather tempered with human judgment and decision making, they will incur errors. Conversely, if they do not trust automation when it should be trusted, as in cases where it can sense aspects of the environment such as radiation levels or distances in space, they will also incur errors. This will be a larger risk when astronauts are less able to rely on human mission control experts and are out of touch, far away, and on their own. The SRP also identified 11 new gaps and five new tasks. Although the SRP had an extremely large quantity of reading material prior to and during the meeting, we still did not feel we had an overview of the activities and tasks the astronauts would be performing in exploration missions. Without a detailed task analysis and taxonomy of activities the humans would be engaged in, we felt it was impossible to know whether the gaps and tasks were really sufficient to insure human safety, performance, and comfort in the exploration missions. The SRP had difficulty evaluating many of the gaps and tasks that were not as quantitative as those related to concrete physical danger such as excessive noise and vibration. Often the research tasks for cognitive risks that accompany poor task or information design addressed only part, but not all, of the gaps they were programmed to fill. In fact the tasks outlined will not close the gap but only scratch the surface in many cases. In other cases, the gap was written too broadly, and really should be restated in a more constrained way that can be addressed by a well-organized and complementary set of tasks. In many cases, the research results should be turned into guidelines for design. However, it was not clear whether the researchers or another group would construct and deliver these guidelines.
Document ID
20100005228
Acquisition Source
Johnson Space Center
Document Type
Other
Authors
Wichansky, Anna
(Oracle Corp. Redwood Shores, CA, United States)
Badler, Norman
(Pennsylvania Univ. Philadelphia, PA, United States)
Butler, Keith
(Washington Univ. Seattle, WA, United States)
Cummings, Mary
(Massachusetts Inst. of Tech. Cambridge, MA, United States)
DeLucia, Patricia
(Texas Tech Univ. Lubbock, TX, United States)
Endsley, Mica
(SA Technologies Marietta, GA, United States)
Scholtz, Jean
(Battelle Memorial Inst. Rockaway Bench, OR, United States)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
December 1, 2009
Subject Category
Man/System Technology And Life Support
Report/Patent Number
JSC-CN-19652
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.
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