Emergency Takeover Performance Evaluation of Train Operators in Semi-Automated Urban Rail Transit: An Attention-Enhanced MLP Approach

Semi-automated urban rail transit systems still rely on human intervention during safety-critical events, yet emergency takeover performance has received far less attention than in SAE Level-3 road automation. This study focuses on the reaction phase of emergency takeover, defined as the interval from anomaly onset to the train operator’s first control action. We propose a conditional two-stage evaluation framework that jointly assesses event recognition and control execution quality. A simulation-based experiment was conducted to replicate GoA2 operating conditions under controlled emergency scenarios. Three indicators were extracted: (i) event recognition accuracy derived from eye-tracking and retrospective recall, (ii) takeover reaction time, and (iii) initial action accuracy reflecting compliance with operational speed or braking limits. An attention-enhanced multilayer perceptron (MLP) was developed to dynamically weight input features and improve interpretability. The proposed model achieved stable subject-wise performance, with an average accuracy of 0.86 and a macro F1-score of 0.857. These results support the feasibility of interpretable learning-based evaluation for human-in-the-loop safety assessment and provide practical implications for improving operator readiness monitoring and operational safety management in semi-automated metro systems.

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Publication Details

Journal
Applied Sciences
Published
2026-02-12
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/app16041820
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Human-Automation Interaction and Safety
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
60.58
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Emergency Takeover Performance Evaluation of Train Operators in Semi-Automated Urban Rail Transit: An Attention-Enhanced MLP Approach

Zhigang Liu, Fangsheng Wang, Lin Zhu, Yuanchun Huang et al.
1 citations
Applied Sciences
Human-Automation Interaction and Safety
60.58
article

Emergency Takeover Performance Evaluation of Train Operators in Semi-Automated Urban Rail Transit: An Attention-Enhanced MLP Approach

Zhigang Liu, Fangsheng Wang, Lin Zhu, Yuanchun Huang, Hangrui Ji
article en
1 citations

Abstract

Semi-automated urban rail transit systems still rely on human intervention during safety-critical events, yet emergency takeover performance has received far less attention than in SAE Level-3 road automation. This study focuses on the reaction phase of emergency takeover, defined as the interval from anomaly onset to the train operator’s first control action. We propose a conditional two-stage evaluation framework that jointly assesses event recognition and control execution quality. A simulation-based experiment was conducted to replicate GoA2 operating conditions under controlled emergency scenarios. Three indicators were extracted: (i) event recognition accuracy derived from eye-tracking and retrospective recall, (ii) takeover reaction time, and (iii) initial action accuracy reflecting compliance with operational speed or braking limits. An attention-enhanced multilayer perceptron (MLP) was developed to dynamically weight input features and improve interpretability. The proposed model achieved stable subject-wise performance, with an average accuracy of 0.86 and a macro F1-score of 0.857. These results support the feasibility of interpretable learning-based evaluation for human-in-the-loop safety assessment and provide practical implications for improving operator readiness monitoring and operational safety management in semi-automated metro systems.

Applied SciencesVol. 16(4)
Shanghai University of Engineering Science (CN), Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Rail Transit Design & Research Institute (CN)
Sustainable cities and communities
Openalex Percentile: Top 1%
Human-Automation Interaction and Safety
60.58
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