LAUSR

Abstract In human-machine systems, a user operates a machine using information on machine’s behavior displayed at a user interface. If the abstraction of the information is insufficient for the user to anticipate machine’s state, mode confusions occur in the human-machine systems. In the case where the machine is a physical system, consistency between the machine’s bahaviors and user’s knowledge of temporal information on the operations is also important to avoid a mode confusion. Therefore, in this paper, we deal with mode confusion due to the lack of temporal information on machine’s dynamics. First, we introduce a model of the human-machine system with temporal information using transition systems. Next, we define a mode confusion including the temporal discrepancy between the machine’s behaviors and the user’s knowledge formally. Then, we show that the nonexistence condition of the mode confusion is related to an alternating simulation relation and propose a detection algorithm of the mode confusion. Finally, we apply the algorithm to a heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.