An Application of a Failure Detection Method to a Man-Machine System

Abstract

In this paper, as an application of a failure detection method to a man-machine system, an on-line experiment is described to show how a man's attention is distracted. The outline of this experiment is as follows: a subject performing a tracking action is given a side task. The distribution of the tracking errors is assumed to be normal whether the side task is given or not. And it is assumed that the mean value and/or the variance of the tracking error curve would change with an intervention of side task. These changes are detected by the modified Wald's SPRT. The results are only qualitative but show that the distracted attention will show directly on the tracking error curves in some cases. Therefore the method in this paper is simple and effective as compared with the method which identifies the human and detects shifting attention by the change of the parameter identified.