A Primary Review on Team Performance in Automated Systems

With the development of technology, various work previously conducted by human operators has been replaced by automation. In nuclear industry, advanced digital technology has been applied to assist operating crews in managing the power plant. Issues on automation have been extensively examined by researchers. Problems such as “clumsy automation”, “automation surprises”, and Out Of The Loop (OOTL) error can be introduced with the application of automation. As the automation becomes more versatile in nature, designers of complex social-technical system should pay more attention to the human-automation interaction and its influence on system performance. Apart from all the automation functions applied in the modern nuclear power plants, the influence of automation on the operating crews was less examined. Based on the review of automation related and team performance literature and models, a team-automation model is proposed and discussed in this study. This review wishes to provide an outline for the team-automation relationship and offer some supports for related future research.