Miscommunications between air traffic controllers (ATCOs) and pilots can lead to severe accidents, making accurate readback verification essential. Audio-visual interaction, namely generative subtitles, is expected to enhance readback verification by providing redundant information. However, this redundancy may also increase ATCOs’ cognitive workload and challenge their working memory capacity. This study investigated the effect of subtitles on readback performance and cognitive workload across different working memory capacities. A simulated verification task based on ATCO task analysis was employed, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy with eye-tracking was analyzed to assess subtitles’ effects. Results showed that subtitles improved readback performance across working memory groups without increasing cognitive workload. Oxygenated hemoglobin deactivation in frontal, parietal, and occipital regions indicated more efficient cognitive processing, and higher blink rates among high working memory participants suggested reduced cognitive load. This study deepens understanding of audio-visual interaction and offers practical insights for enhancing ATCO–pilot communication.

In recent years, the potential applications of Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) in fields, such as healthcare, social psychology, and industrial design have attracted wide research attention, providing new directions for human factors research. For instance, LMM-based smart systems have become novel research subjects of human factors studies, and LMM introduces new research paradigms and methodologies to this field. Therefore, this article aims to explore the applications, challenges, and future prospects of LMM in the domain of human factors and ergonomics through an expert-LMM collaborated literature and patent review. Specifically, this article proposes a novel review method and introduces research studies and patents related to LMM-based accident analysis, human modeling, and intervention design. Subsequently, the article discusses future trends in research paradigm and challenges of human factors and ergonomics studies in the era of LMMs. It is expected that the review results offer valuable insights and serve as a reference for using LMMs in human factors research.

This paper describes an IR-UWB transmitter with an asymmetric pulse which is featured with a steep rising edge and a slow falling edge. The proposed asymmetric pulse not only achieves a better ranging resolution but also reduces the intersymbol interference (ISI) for high data rate communication. For low data rate communication, a frequency hopping (FH) method is applied to the transmitter to enhance the link margin. The proposed UWB transmitter is designed in 65nm CMOS. Compared to the conventional triangle pulse, the ranging variation of the proposed asymmetric pulse is reduced from 120ps to 10ps over process, voltage and temperature (PVT) variations, the transmitter achieves the maximum data rate of 500Mb/s with a pulse energy of 11.5pJ/bit while meeting the UWB spectral mask.