Deriving the human interface from the automatic controls

Any significant control system is intended to implement a well defined set of tasks in cooperation with some operator, making human interfacing central to the design of effective controls. Applications designed by control engineers alone can easily fail for lack of effective human interfacing. But control and human interfacing have different traditions, the one based on a primarily mathematical theory, the other on scenarios, formalized testing, social science, and visual or psychological design. Modern control requires more systematic treatment of the paired technologies, in order to better guide the interface design, and support the economic implementation of combined system designs. Such treatment would also allow interface designs which adapted to dynamic changes in the application situation. The paper will introduce the topic, discussing the role of the operator in the face of different classes of control function, setting the stage for other papers dealing with different human factors issues behind this kind of situation adaptive interfacing. It will also show how control systems and human interfaces can be implemented to parallel each other automatically, when derived from a common statement of control intent (in this case expressed in statements in a proposed computer process control language)