197
Improving Safety
lack of good human factor engineering practice. Important factors moving forward
are robust sensor quality, redundancy on key technology and good education for
land-based operators that support sensemaking and build situational awareness. It is
likely that humans are not continuously monitoring one vessel at a time but will be
needed to supervise and intervene when necessary. For a constrained autonomous
vessel, the paper pointed to the need for better HAI due to the need of time to support
sensemaking and get situational awareness before action.
autonomy in air
Automation and autonomy in aviation have been implemented since World War II,
where functions have been systematically automated and the manning has been
systematically reduced. Incidents due to automation happen, but aviation safety
( commercial passenger traffic) is extremely high.
In addition to increased automation in manned flights, the use of drones or
unmanned aerial systems ( UAS) has risen significantly in the last years. Examples
of use are:
• Photography and video recording to support information and crisis
management
• Inspection of ( critical) components to improve safety, avoid human exposure, reduce costs or improve quality
• Detection and survey of environmental issues, such as gas emissions, ice
detection in sea, overview and control of pollution
• Logistics – delivery of critical components or supplies ( such as medicine,
blood)
Safety Challenges
Manned flights have a high level of safety, issues have often been a result of poor
sensemaking and poor situational awareness of the crew. The reliability of the technical equipment is high. Automation accidents have happened lately where guidelines during design and certification have not been followed. This was the case in the
Boeing 737 MAX fatal crashes ( Cruz and de Oliveira Dias, 2020). After analysing
the accidents, Endsley ( 2019) recommended ensuring compliance with human factors design standards and support for human factors assessment in aircraft testing
and certification.
Safety challenges in UAS differ from the challenges in manned operations, due to
the immaturity of technology. Looking at the use of large drones in the US, Waraich
et al. ( 2013) documents that mishaps may happen more frequently ( i.e. 50–100 mishaps occur every 100,000 flight hours vs human-operated aircraft where there is
one mishap per 100,000 flight hours). The mishap rate is 100 times higher in UAS
remotely piloted than in manned operations. The leading causes are poor attention to
human factors science, such as poor design of human machine interfaces in ground
control centres ( Waraich et al., 2013; Hobbes et al., 2014).
In Petritoli et al. ( 2017), the mean time between failures ( MTBF) estimated for
UAS was around 1,000 hours, approximately 100 times higher than MTBF in manned
Improving Safety
lack of good human factor engineering practice. Important factors moving forward
are robust sensor quality, redundancy on key technology and good education for
land-based operators that support sensemaking and build situational awareness. It is
likely that humans are not continuously monitoring one vessel at a time but will be
needed to supervise and intervene when necessary. For a constrained autonomous
vessel, the paper pointed to the need for better HAI due to the need of time to support
sensemaking and get situational awareness before action.
autonomy in air
Automation and autonomy in aviation have been implemented since World War II,
where functions have been systematically automated and the manning has been
systematically reduced. Incidents due to automation happen, but aviation safety
( commercial passenger traffic) is extremely high.
In addition to increased automation in manned flights, the use of drones or
unmanned aerial systems ( UAS) has risen significantly in the last years. Examples
of use are:
• Photography and video recording to support information and crisis
management
• Inspection of ( critical) components to improve safety, avoid human exposure, reduce costs or improve quality
• Detection and survey of environmental issues, such as gas emissions, ice
detection in sea, overview and control of pollution
• Logistics – delivery of critical components or supplies ( such as medicine,
blood)
Safety Challenges
Manned flights have a high level of safety, issues have often been a result of poor
sensemaking and poor situational awareness of the crew. The reliability of the technical equipment is high. Automation accidents have happened lately where guidelines during design and certification have not been followed. This was the case in the
Boeing 737 MAX fatal crashes ( Cruz and de Oliveira Dias, 2020). After analysing
the accidents, Endsley ( 2019) recommended ensuring compliance with human factors design standards and support for human factors assessment in aircraft testing
and certification.
Safety challenges in UAS differ from the challenges in manned operations, due to
the immaturity of technology. Looking at the use of large drones in the US, Waraich
et al. ( 2013) documents that mishaps may happen more frequently ( i.e. 50–100 mishaps occur every 100,000 flight hours vs human-operated aircraft where there is
one mishap per 100,000 flight hours). The mishap rate is 100 times higher in UAS
remotely piloted than in manned operations. The leading causes are poor attention to
human factors science, such as poor design of human machine interfaces in ground
control centres ( Waraich et al., 2013; Hobbes et al., 2014).
In Petritoli et al. ( 2017), the mean time between failures ( MTBF) estimated for
UAS was around 1,000 hours, approximately 100 times higher than MTBF in manned