Our lab is involved in a nation-wide project to develop an integrated "tele-medical" system. The project will involve: the monitoring of patient condition and location; diagnosis and surgery using teleoperators; and techniques for the required communications. Our areas of research are (i) investigating and solving the problem of time-delay in tele-operation, and (ii) examining the benefits of surgical "tele-cooperation".
The goal of this project is to develop a theory of presence in order to answer some important questions about telepresence and virtual presence. The study involves an experimental investigation of how control/sensory transformations affect performance in hand-eye tasks.
This research is involved with investigating human-factors issues relevant to the operation of high-speed rail systems. The pertinent issues include areas such as situation awareness, the role of automation, and the role of in-cab information displays. A distributed interactive simulation of a high-speed rail system has been implemented for use in human factors experiments.
The main objectives of the human factors research in the Central Artery/Tunnel Project are to carry out the task analysis for operators in the Operations Control Center (OCC), and to develop an operator-in-the-loop simulation of the OCC for incident management scenarios. Other research topics include the design of the specific layout, the design of displays and controls, computer aiding, and human-computer function allocation for the OCC.
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