The rising cognitive cost of automation

Recent studies have examined the trade-off involved in auto-pilot systems. Although automation reduces the workload of the pilot in important tasks, it also reduces the ‘situation awareness’ and produces ‘Out of the loop unfamiliarity’ (OOTLUF). Whereas the workload reduction provides a benefit, the loss of situation awareness entails a cost when the pilot/performer resumes control. This present study explored this trade-off by asking participants to navigate a set of virtual Hebb/Williams mazes, under both manual and automated conditions. Automation was simulated on alternate mazes by having participants learn a route through which they were passively transported using a previous participant’s active exploration. The cost of situation awareness was measured as the increase in time to complete a 3-Dimensional (3D) maze based on the method of learning, while workload was measured using a sensory task incorporated into the maze navigation. Although the ‘OOTLUF’ cost of automation was observed in this experiment, the benefits to workload were not as clear cut.