Objective evaluation of human manual control adaptation boundaries using a cybernetic approach

Manual control tasks can be found everywhere in our daily activities, and the human ability to adapt in controlling many different vehicles such as cars and airplanes make it possible for us to travel farther, faster and higher. The human adaptation ability to changes in the controlled element dynamics is indispensable for tasks requiring high performance and safety, and none of the state-of-the-art automatic control systems can compete. For example, in the racing industry, professional racing drivers are needed to adapt to different carconfigurations and consistently push the car to its performance limit in the driving simulator and on the track, which is important for designing and tuning the cars. In aviation, pilots are our “last line of defense” for flight safety, especially in emergency situations in which automatic flight systems fail