Engineering human-in-the-loop interactions in cyber-physical systems

Abstract Context: Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are gradually and widely introducing autonomous capabilities into everything. However, human participation is required to accomplish tasks that are better performed with humans (often called human-in-the-loop). In this way, human-in-the-loop solutions have the potential to handle complex tasks in unstructured environments, by combining the cognitive skills of humans with autonomous systems behaviors. Objective: The objective of this paper is to provide appropriate techniques and methods to help designers analyze and design human-in-the-loop solutions. These solutions require interactions that engage the human, provide natural and understandable collaboration, and avoid disturbing the human in order to improve human experience. Method: We have analyzed several works that identified different requirements and critical factors that are relevant to the design of human-in-the-loop solutions. Based on these works, we have defined a set of design principles that are used to build our proposal. Fast-prototyping techniques have been applied to simulate the designed human-in-the-loop solutions and validate them. Results: We have identified the technological challenges of designing human-in-the-loop CPSs and have provided a method that helps designers to identify and specify how the human and the system should work together, focusing on the control strategies and interactions required. Conclusions: The use of our approach facilitates the design of human-in-the-loop solutions. Our method is practical at earlier stages of the software life cycle since it allows domain experts to focus on the problem and not on the solution.