Haptic shared control during automated take-off: effects on trust and workload

Abstract

Automation reduces pilot workload but introduces risks such as mode confusion and automation surprise, which can impair situation awareness and delay responses. Haptic shared control, delivered via active sidesticks, may mitigate these risks by providing continuous force feedback to convey automation intent and warnings. This study examined how the haptic information in shared control systems affects trust, workload, and awareness during automated take-off scenarios involving normal and abnormal autopilot behaviors. Twenty participants monitored automation performance while completing a secondary 2-back task under two shared control conditions: haptic shared versus input-mixing shared control. Results show that abnormal autopilot behaviors significantly increased workload and reduced trust, with haptic shared control having context-dependent effects - supporting trust and reducing workload during over-rotation but lowering trust in normal conditions. Haptic shared control had no significant effect upon participant situation awareness or secondary task performance. These findings suggest that the provision of haptic information within shared control can support pilots during automation anomalies but require human-centered implementation and training to avoid unintended effects under normal conditions.