The human operator is a central figure in the design and operation of industrial automation systems

Since the advent of computer control based industrial automation processes in the mid sixties, engineers have been continuously striving to minimize the discrepancies between a human’s cognitive model of what he wants to accomplish and the control system’s understanding of the task. Continued success comes in the form of improved system performance and safety, and greater reliability. Such improvements have resulted in the gradual elimination of the mundane tasks previously accomplished by operators, thus allowing the human in the loop to handle the more challenging tasks of supervision, exception control, optimization tasks and maintenance duties. Hence over the last 50 years a clear division of responsibilities between the human and the machine has evolved based on the optimal ability of each.