The human factor conflicts in aviation with technology
According to experimental data, in the conditions of monotonous passive observation, the level of concentration of attention decreases, the thresholds for detection of signals increase, the reaction time increases, the level of readiness for emergency actions and overall performance decreases. An unexpected, sudden signal in these conditions can cause stress.
The principle of an active operator implies that a person continuously receives information both on the basic parameters of the system and on the environment (on the course of solving the problem). That part of the functions of automatic devices is to maintain the operator, in order to ensure its activities and the possibility of operating its reserves. And that, finally, part of the management operations he performs himself.
DESIGNING HUMAN ACTIVITIES
The design of human activity is the end product of professional analysis. The embodiment of the principle of the active operator in the distribution of functions between man and machine is the main essence and specific content of the design activities of the operator.
As a result, due to human activity, the accident rate, fatigue, preserved professional health, improved quality and production efficiency were reduced. The principle of an active operator has allowed to introduce a system of combined control of automation and man, to develop psychological justifications for reserving failures by man.
From my position, the overall result of the participation of psychologists, physiologists, ergonomists, together with engineers, programmers, designers, operators expressed in the fact that:
- innovative technologies have been developed to optimize the conjugation of a person with technical devices, and now with computing equipment;
- science psychology, ergonomics enriched with methods of injury and death prevention. The quality of products has grown, environmental conditions have improved, resistance to extreme situations, a general cultural level, the beauty of life being;
- expert security control entered the system, taking into account the human factor;
- parity development with foreign countries in the field of military equipment has come together. The ergonomic culture of Being has returned to Russia the piety of the return of good.
TECHNOLOGY PROBLEMS
Our psychologists have helped a lot, qualifiedly, after terrorist attacks, floods, earthquakes, man-made and natural disasters, and psychological support systems have been created. Psychologist as a person who carries a good, becomes a nominal name.
I will dwell on one example - the human factor in aviation, which is attributed to 80% of flight accidents. I will not upset the statistics and death. I will touch upon only one causal trouble: the return of technocracy to the throne, and even coupled with the complete unprofessionalism of managers in the field of knowledge about a flying person. But aerospace psychology has a reserve of knowledge for the implementation of measures with the leadership of airlines on the effective prevention of accidents.
The problem of technocratization has always been painful and controversial for any level of civilization. Technique is a means of adaptation to the environment. Actually, the concept of "civilization" means the ability of educated people to use technical advances to maintain and increase the well-being and health of people.
The development of aviation as one of the components of technical progress since its inception has had a special meaning: to create conditions for the knowledge of the non-manmade world, to reveal in humans the need to expand their knowledge and enrich themselves in a cultural, spiritual, moral attitude to themselves and to those under the wing. Aviation should be attributed to the technique that philosopher Martin Heidegger understood astutely, stating: “Technique is a means to an end, everyone wants to establish the power of the spirit over technology, and technology is increasingly threatening to break free from the power of man.”
The religious philosopher and scientist Pavel Florensky expressed his judgment no less interestingly and predictably: “When the main role in the life of a person is taken by adaptive functions, he actually rushes back. The technique, in itself neutral, becomes a Trojan horse that hides the source of death. ”
M. Heidegger noticed this remarkably subtly: “Technique (and especially aviation. - V.P.) is a type of disclosure of secret. The essence of technology is located in the area where the discovery takes place and its incontinence. The mission of uncovering secret as such in all its forms, and therefore necessity, is a risk. ”
Our famous compatriot Mikhail Gromov expressed his opinion about this, but in his own way, who stated that “no one of the designers fully knows how the plane they made will behave. Only the pilot can establish all the whims of the aircraft, all the dangers, his strength and his weakness. ” Therefore, aviation is born as a product not only to reveal the secret world, but also as a product of the creative potential of its creators and flight crews.
And the pilot is not guilty
The designer is obliged to create the basic safety of the aircraft, relying not only on his intellect, but also on morality. And it should be invested in the plane.
For 18 years, I had to participate in experiments in flight, being the performer and then the head of scientific programs to study the causes of the unreliability of actions, especially in extreme situations of the highest degree of danger.
I will report only what is related to this article:
- 35 – 40% of errors associated with ergonomic deficiencies of equipment, alarm systems, the type and form of information presentation, excessive atomization of functions performed by automata;
- the viewing angle, as a rule, was with violations not only of recommendations, but also of ergonomic standards. The same applies to non-compliance with the principles of the body circuit, the threshold characteristics of all types of analyzers. The result - hundreds of cases of entanglement of toggle switches, buttons, levers, followed by: non-release of the chassis, cleaning the chassis instead of flaps, cleaning the chassis instead of releasing the headlight, stopping the engines, changing the direction of fuel supply to the supply tank, turning on the opposite systems at high speed, etc. etc.;
- The immoral accusation of flight personnel errors, which have arisen as a regular phenomenon, which has lasted for many years, because this is how the body and its psyche are constructed, which require taking into account their regularities when controlling the aircraft. That is why, when forming goals and tasks, at the initial stage, the designer should have information from ergonomists and engineering psychologists, characteristics of a person’s capabilities and limitations. This was especially true of those restrictions that will not be lifted by will. For example, gray and black veil in front of the eyes on large overloads. Comfort for the pilot is the controllability and stability of the aircraft, the ease of perception of information, its clarity and the security of hazard diagnostics. It follows from this, under whom we make an aircraft, what is the resource and potential, what is the structure of the personality, starting with worldview and motives. Figuratively speaking, a contribution is needed in the sense of safety, embedded in the flight performance for any apparatus, rushing in the sky.
An example of "technocratic" morality. During the fighting in Afghanistan, the crews did not die from missiles ("Stingers") in the engine. The fact is that the pilot is able to land the helicopter in an autorotif mode. However, on the Mi-8, in particular, there was neither armor nor depreciation during the impact on landing. The pilots died from injuries, not from the rocket. But the Mi-38 is equipped with a unique survival system for the crew and passengers. Its chassis and seats are made with energy suppressors. This allows you to survive in an emergency at a speed of landing 12 m / s. These developments were made in the Institute of Aerospace Medicine.
SPIRITUAL COMPONENT
I would especially like to raise the issue of the spiritual component, which was developed by the flight personnel due to aircraft engineering and a certain part of the appropriation of human morality invested by designers in the aircraft.
When making a film about the spirituality of the flight profession, I asked the director to show the face of the cadet coming out of the cockpit after the first independent departure on the MiG-29. Naturally, I spoke with him there. When asked to name the most important thing, he would highlight amid all feelings of joy, he replied with a special intonation: “Freedom, responsibility. Can!"
How not to remember Hegel: “Morality is the idea of freedom, as a living good, which in its self-consciousness has its knowledge, excitement, and through its action its reality ... Real freedom is achieved by the spirit, not through revelation from objects, but through knowing them their truth. "
And so that it does not seem to the reader that all this is too far from aviation, I will cite the words of pilots who have 20 – 30 years of flight experience, including test ones. I would very much like you to feel not the service, but the inner world of a person, which determines not his mask, but his being.
Question to the pilots:
- Was the flight inspired work for you?
Answers:
- Any flight is filled with inspiration. How will the inspiration, fly must stop (Colonel-General VI Andreev).
- Piloting, you feel a sense of liberation, dissolving in space (AM Markush).
- Physical pleasure from the freedom of movement in space (M.L. Gallay).
- Flying is open inspiration. My spirituality was filled with heaven. In recent years, he began to feel a connection with Cosmos (General AK Sulyanov).
- Flying has never been a problem for me, since I was striving to comprehend new levels of perfection (drill pilot, divisional commander M. Voronin).
Question to the pilots:
- What did aviation give you?
Answers:
- Aviation exacerbates the possibility of self-expression and self-affirmation, disgraces conceit. Constantly creates an impetus to dissatisfaction with oneself and increases the desire for creativity through the assimilation of a good attitude towards you from more experienced comrades. You have given birth to the process of comprehending the unknown, the very sharpness of this comprehension, the joy that you can be yourself in contact with the Universe (Honored Pilot Tester E.N. Knyazev).
- The sky gives new sensations, understanding, meanings that cannot be obtained on earth (the chief pilot of the company, AS Yakovlev, Hero of the Soviet Union, AA Sinitsyn).
- I wanted to fly, to overcome myself, I wanted to become a real person (A. Tereshchenko, a pilot of Civil Aviation).
- The ability to live in another dimension (Hero of Russia V. Gorbunov).
I have brought only the touches of that spiritual world, the second “I”, which characterizes the personality of a man flying.
In this small piece about spirituality I allow myself to summarize: flight, especially in extreme conditions, sharpens the information connection with the Universe, more precisely, with the noosphere. This is a separate topic. I will only quote Vernadsky: “The biosphere is a special shell of the earth, passing into a new state - the noosphere. That is, in such a state, in which the mind and the human work directed by it, as a new unprecedented human force on the planet, should manifest themselves.
RISK OF PROFESSIONAL UNRELIABILITY
Today it is a national task, extremely important. That is why it is so important to create conditions for a safe flight. However, today's foreign technology created comfort outwardly, and in fact, by computerizing it, deprived the pilot of his natural connection with Heaven, weakened the first thread — the mind and the second — deprived the sensual connection of the subconscious with danger. The pilot gradually turns into an operator devoid of spirituality. Having deprived a person of natural properties that determine flight ability, reliability, humanity, corporate honor and the honor of his name, technocrats have increased the risk of the unreliability of professionals.
Today, in aviation, the computer language is not generated by the living mind of the gods. Aviation computerization has generated an electronic pilot with artificial intelligence.
Due to deep automation of aircraft control, digital equipment of radio-electronic equipment, communication systems, navigation software, foreign-made airplanes have achieved higher competitiveness, having increased the level of flight safety during flights in adverse weather conditions of the third meteorological category. This fact of technical progress concerns mainly aircraft. But there is still a person as a system-forming factor. And here a number of problems arise. I will note beforehand that the transition to a two-member crew was dictated not by the comfort of the conditions, but by economic gain. This innovation was compensated by the creation of artificial intelligence in computer programs of deep automation.
The pilots of Russia flying on this technique are mostly satisfied and very much, although this satisfaction on 80% is connected with the economic improvement of their lives.
What makes me express a number of unpopular thoughts about the ideology of constructing mathematical programs embedded in specific computers, for example, on the "Airbus". I do not act as a deceiver and justify only one position. Its meaning: the chosen ideology of artificial intelligence domination over the pilot's self-sufficiency, over flight experience, laws of psychophysiological regulation of activity, over the pilot's role as a hot reserve will inevitably lead to a state of so-called potential insecurity, that is, a hidden threat to flight safety. Naturally, this requires proof.
I will begin to defend my postulate with engineering and psychological requirements, approaches to any level of automation of aircraft control. What I’ll talk about below is the result of flight tests of all types of automated control systems (ACS) on domestic technology. As a result, both in the USA and in our country we agreed on the ideological principle of interfacing automation and man. I use the psychological theory of the active operator (Lomov, Zavalova, Ponomarenko). Ultimately, together with the designers, we managed to create joint control systems for military aircraft and a steering system for civil aviation. Of course, at that time we had not yet reached the level provided by digital software. At the same time, to ensure successful backup of automatic control systems, that is, to increase flight safety from a technological standpoint, the following principles should be followed, worked out by life and death:
- abandon the false installation that a person is an unreliable element in the system, and it is better to use it as a control;
- automation is used to assist the pilot in the process of carrying out his professional activities. It is capable of preventing pilot errors, unloading the negative impact of time pressure. Moreover, it should signal to the pilot about the need for his assistance, that is, the transition to active management;
- “Pilots should have professional skills in operating their aircraft, regardless of their level of automation. They should be knowledgeable in choosing the right level of automation and should be able to move from one level of automation to another ”(Delta).
I want to emphasize that the formation of the information environment, motor and visual fields are significantly complemented by knowledge of perceptual threshold values, linear and angular accelerations, and tactile. The design must take into account the laws of mental activity. I will give a few examples.
The detection process is provided by unconditional reflexes in the form of an approximate reaction. But if the signal is 5 – 6 times the thresholds of the corresponding receptors, the person focuses on the signal much more time, not taking into account the movement in the space of the aircraft. This is how natural errors are generated. If the pilot during the active work uses RAM, if necessary, switches to the use of long-term memory, the process of perception of the current information is interrupted (“I look, but I do not see”). If the rhythm of breathing is disturbed in a state of stress, this affects the prediction of precise motor coordination. If the pilot is in the state of the so-called dominant, that is, superconcentration of consciousness on any task, then the brain does not perceive other information. Moreover, a person may not see or even hear an alarm. If angular rotations are more than 12 – 15 rev./s, a motor reaction reflex occurs after sudden braking. The pilot in 100% of cases will receive the result at the output: the illusion of spatial movement of the aircraft. And the reflex will work to take the helm instead of cleaning the roll. This error is due to the laws of physiology. Speech informer is suitable for situations that have 5 – 10 seconds. safe movement of the aircraft, for speech is heard and the brain suppresses the subcortex along with unconditioned reflexes. And until the speech is over, time and space will already change, in which the danger will increase and requires other actions.
I brought in a simplified form those really working laws of mental activity that are not embedded in the software product of the Airbus computer.
SEVERAL WORDS ABOUT COMPUTER
The art of compiling computer programs serves a state of reliability, but can also provoke a direct security threat. Let us recall the Irkutsk disaster, when the crew on the run could not slow down due to the release of one of the engines to take-off mode. The computer turned off all the brake devices on the run and proudly announced that the crew was not ready for takeoff. But the asymmetry of the traction is a dangerous refusal, but this is not the case in the program, because the creators in general “meant” the person.
In contrast to a computer, the intellect of a pilot assesses sensual experience and imaginative thinking in his own way, evaluates the behavior of the aircraft and the environment using feelings. Well-known academician Boris Rauschenbakh called for knowledge of a rational image of the world: "In human practice, rational knowledge and moral values always complement each other." For the flight business, this means that when designing computer programs, specialists must be admitted who know the basics of flight work and the characteristics of the pilots' personality. It is necessary to dilute the technical ideology of spiritual outlook.
A small experience of foreign technology, more precisely, the experience of using computers, shows how a flying person changes. It is alienated from its nature, from the plane, and therefore, from the passengers. He gradually robotized, transformed into the operator of mortal life. There are new personality traits, loss of a sense of readiness to solve abnormal situations, selfishness prevails in behavior, corporatism leaves, being replaced by individualism. Gradually, the spiritual person, overwhelmed by economic well-being, is filled with indifference. Professionalism is one thing: the jaggedness of English texts, the algorithmization of stereotypical actions. Against this background, even the biological reserves of the brain fade.
I conclude my article with a flight opinion, with the words of an 1-class pilot-instructor Vasily Yershov: “The whole misfortune of a mismatch of the Russian mentality with Western philosophy of flight is that the Russian cannot learn to be a soulless function. Despite the strict implementation of the governing documents, the approach of the Russian pilot has always been creative. Now he has to be taught to think in English. ”
I think that the aggregate Russian, engineering, flight, psychological intelligence is able to optimize the domestic intellectual computer for a person. To do this, aviation will need one thing: to put the honor of humanitarian culture and science that protects the life and health of passengers ahead of naked economic benefits.
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