Hey there! My name is Olivia and I am an Engineering Psychology student at Tufts University. Welcome to my blog. I have already posted a few blogs about some previous research I have done and just some things I find interesting but for the next few months I will be posting about topics we discuss in my Human Machine System Design class.
Since being back at school, I have gotten a lot of questions about what this past summer was like - for context, I lived and worked on a commercial salmon fishing boat.
This unconventional job allowed me to work with and manage a ton of machines and systems that I had never been exposed to. I had the unique hands-on experience of running and working with some human machines and it opened my eyes to the complex world of human machine systems that are in our daily lives.
A human machine system is a network of machines/devices that work with or at the hands of a human operator. This is an incredibly broad description and can range from a person using a saw to cut down a tree, to a hydraulic drum that spins and pulls a fishing net back onboard (like the one pictured above) that is controlled via a foot pedal, to an autonomous robot vacuum.
Though we have some amazing human-machine systems, society/developers have decided to take it a step further and automate them (or a feature or function within). Though fully automation is still a little ways out, the progress and successes thus far are so cool. Unfortunately, humans are creatures of habit and are not the best with change. We struggle with new technology just as we often as we struggle with getting used to new cultures. I believe this is one of the biggest roadblock that faces much of what is to come in the world of automation.
There are so many systems and so much research to be done in regards to better understanding the characteristics, features, and functions of human machine systems and automation. I am excited to learn more about them.
Wow what an amazing job! It seems like you bring a much more hands on perspective to the topic of Human Machine System Design which I definitely appreciate. I definitely agree that people might not be as quick as we think to adopt automation. Perhaps you have seen some examples of this with your experience on the fishing boat.
Wow sounds like an interesting summer! and I do agree that even though automation sounds like a great step, it will take some time to get used to