Proactive supervisory decision support from trend-based monitoring of autonomous and automated systems: A tale of two domains

Abstract

The digital technology revolution continues to roil work domains. An influx of automation and autonomous systems is transforming the role of humans from operators into supervisors. For some domains, such as process control, supervisory control is already the norm. For other domains, such as military command and control, the transformation to autonomous supervision is just beginning. In both domains, legacy operation-centric, real-time data displays and tools provide inadequate task support, leading to unproductive user work-arounds. They give rise to a reactive monitoring stance, and will not scale to meet the new, different task needs. We review advanced display design projects in each domain that, in contrast, provide proactive supervisory decision support. We identified key perceptual and cognitive challenges in supervision, and applied cognitive science concepts to the design of novel trend-based interfaces. We drew lessons from process control to combat the challenges likely to arise in military command and control. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.