Since the early days of the Industrial Revolution, people have been managing the operational health of a wide variety of mechanical engineering systems, including industrial equipment and machinery, manufacturing plants, and transportation vehicles. Health management duties typically include monitoring the operational status of the system, diagnosing the source of an abnormal operating mode when one arises (typically, some form of component malfunction), and executing the procedures necessary to isolate and minimize the harmful effects of the malfunction and restore critical functionality.
As the scope and complexity of mechanical systems has grown, so has the health management load on human operators. Fortunately, system health management (SHM) technologies have now advanced to the point where they can automate many health management (HM) activities. However, integrating SHM automation into what has traditionally been a human‐centered activity raises a host of cutting‐edge human factors issues. These issues include how to display systems information in a way that maximally supports human situation awareness and decision‐making capabilities, how to determine appropriate levels of human–automation function allocation, and how to develop human–machine interfaces that most effectively support human–machine collaboration.
In this chapter, we discuss these issues within the context of crewed spacecraft operations. Human‐rated spacecraft contain very complex and often highly interconnected engineering systems, including propulsion systems; electrical and mechanical power generation and distribution systems; guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) systems; data processing systems; life support systems; and communications systems. Particularly during the dynamic mission phases of launch, ascent, and entry, these systems must perform to precise operational specifications in very harsh environments, whose cumulative effects on system functioning are often poorly understood. Consequently, systems malfunctions are an ever‐present threat to mission success and crew safety, and HM is a major element of mission operations.
Current‐generation spacecraft such as the Space Shuttles were designed and built several decades ago. Although quite advanced for their time, the Shuttle cockpits feature very little in the way of SHM automation and what designers of today's aerospace vehicles would describe as legacy crew–vehicle interfaces. The Shuttles thus provide an ideal platform to identify the human factor difficulties that accompany HM of very complex systems without the benefit of recent advances in SHM technology, and then illustrate the issues that arise when attempting to improve legacy operations with modern interfaces and improved SHM technology. We will therefore begin with a crew‐centered overview of Shuttle HM operations, with a particular focus on the challenges crew members face when detecting, diagnosing, isolating, and recovering from time‐critical systems malfunctions. This description provides a platform from which to launch a detailed discussion of a more advanced operational concept, targeted to next‐generation vehicles, that blends modern cockpit interface concepts with SHM capabilities. Although the specific details of our concept are crew‐centric, the underlying design issues (and examples of possible solutions) are generic enough to apply to a wide variety of operational environments, including mission control centers on the ground.
Human Factors
System Health Management ; 319-337
2011-07-15
19 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
Human Factors - Human Factors (T5.1.1.1- T5.1.1.6)
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