The formalism of affordance in human-machine cooperative systems using finite state automata (FSA)

Control of human-centered systems is a challenging problem because of the critical role of humans in complex systems, and of the human's capability of executing unanticipated actions---both beneficial ones as well as detrimental ones. When modeling human-involved systems where a human operator is considered a crucial system component, it is necessary to consider model complexity that increases significantly due to a human's non-deterministic behavioral patterns. From the perspective of the temporal and physical state domains, human behaviors usually are limited by attention and resource constraints, which come from both resource accessibilities in a certain moment of time, and human/resource constraints such as size and weight.;In order to provide a systematic approach to represent human participation as a part of system operations, this research presents a formal automata model of human-involved systems that incorporates human capabilities (effectivities) with respect to system conditions (affordances). The formalism for affordance is realized by using finite state automata including the juxtaposition function between system affordances and human effectivities. The formalism is based on a hierarchical modeling concept which combines several basic models and defines the granularity of states in systems. The hierarchical FSA modeling can provide the analysis of system complexities and investigation of human planning activities.;We further investigate the role of perception in human actions and examine the representation of perceptual elements using an affordance-based modeling formalism. Necessary and sufficient conditions for mapping perception-based human actions into systems theory are analyzed to develop a predictive modeling formalism in the context of prospective control.;A detailed human-machine cooperative shop-floor control example is provided to illustrate the implementation of a material handling system using a Human-in-the-system (HITS) controller incorporating an affordance-based FSA formalism. A formal human-machine cooperative model based on the finite state automaton (FSA) for designing system control schemes is constructed. The proposed model can provide a framework to combine human activities into system operations while considering human effectivities and system affordances in dynamic situations.