A New Era in Human Factors Engineering: A Survey of the Applications and Prospects of Large Multimodal Models

Human factors engineering studies the interaction between humans and other elements of the systems, aiming to design systems that are more in line with human capabilities and limitations [1]. Human factors engineering originated in the aviation safety field during World War II and gradually expanded into areas such as workstation design, automobile manufacturing, interaction design, and healthcare [2]. Recently, with the development of artificial intelligence (AI), the research scope of human factors engineering is further expanding [3]. Specifically, large multi-modal models (LMMs) have demonstrated significant potential and broad application prospects in various fields such as industrial design and customer service [4], [5]. It is expected that the application of LMMs will gradually change the research paradigm of human factors engineering in three aspects, including human-machine interaction model, research subjects, and research methods.