Challenges and solutions with augmented cognition technologies: Precursor issues to successful integration

Abstract

Today's combat environment requires increasingly complex interactions between human operators and their systems. Whereas in the past, the roles of human and system were clearly delineated, with the integration of advanced technologies into the C4ISR toolkit, the distinct parsing of tasks has given way to paradigms in which the human operator's roles and responsibilities must dynamically change according to task and context. Yet, current methodologies for integrating the human into the system have not kept pace with this shift. An important consequence of this mismatch between human operator and system is that failures often lead to catastrophic and unrecoverable accidents (O'Connor & Cohn, 2010). In order to reintegrate the human element back into the system, new approaches for representing operator performance, in terms of their individual cognitive and behavioral capacities, limitations and changing needs are required. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.