Identification and Examination of Visual Cues for Aircraft Glideslope Control. While aviation safety has improved dramatically over the last 50 years, accidents are still more common during landing than any other stage of flight. This project aims to improve our understanding of the way pilots use visual information to land an aircraft. Once our findings have been incorporated into existing training programs, this much-needed information should result in: (i) reduced pilot training time and cost ....Identification and Examination of Visual Cues for Aircraft Glideslope Control. While aviation safety has improved dramatically over the last 50 years, accidents are still more common during landing than any other stage of flight. This project aims to improve our understanding of the way pilots use visual information to land an aircraft. Once our findings have been incorporated into existing training programs, this much-needed information should result in: (i) reduced pilot training time and cost; (ii) increased trainee pilot safety and confidence; and (iii) reduced aircraft maintenance costs. A PhD student, who will be trained in visual perception and aviation, should contribute significantly to future aviation research in this country.Read moreRead less
Driving in the Fog: Speed Illusions Caused by Variations of Object Contrast. Accurate judgement of the speed of 3D motion is essential to many real world tasks, from driving a vehicle to playing sports. Illusions of perceived speed can occur when the range of brightness levels (ie. the contrast) is reduced, such as in fog, when suffering from cataracts, or when using some sunglasses. This raises issues of safety for drivers (pilots/captains etc). It is expected that advances in the understanding ....Driving in the Fog: Speed Illusions Caused by Variations of Object Contrast. Accurate judgement of the speed of 3D motion is essential to many real world tasks, from driving a vehicle to playing sports. Illusions of perceived speed can occur when the range of brightness levels (ie. the contrast) is reduced, such as in fog, when suffering from cataracts, or when using some sunglasses. This raises issues of safety for drivers (pilots/captains etc). It is expected that advances in the understanding of these effects will inform road safety policy and practice to benefit drivers and pedestrians and to guide the manufacturing of eyewear and display devices (eg. military heads-up-displays). It is also anticipated that this project will be able to answer the much-debated question 'What colour should cricket balls be?'
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Developing and testing a dynamic model of the proximal and distal motivational processes responsible for the regulation of task-directed effort. The project will provide benefits for society, both in terms of its contribution to scientific knowledge and understanding, and potential applications for end users. The question of how people prioritise tasks, set goals, and apply effort is of fundamental importance for understanding human behaviour. Society benefits from basic research into this quest ....Developing and testing a dynamic model of the proximal and distal motivational processes responsible for the regulation of task-directed effort. The project will provide benefits for society, both in terms of its contribution to scientific knowledge and understanding, and potential applications for end users. The question of how people prioritise tasks, set goals, and apply effort is of fundamental importance for understanding human behaviour. Society benefits from basic research into this question, because it allows us to understand the sources of (and limits to) human resilience. The results have wide application in military, industrial and commercial settings. Examples include the development of tools for training people more effectively, managing their workload, and improving their performance.Read moreRead less
How attention and memory for past events interact in determining performance in an air traffic control conflict detection task. This project addresses the priority of safeguarding Australian transportation systems because it concerns failures of attention or memory as sources of human error in aviation. Outcomes will inform the development of training exercises aimed at improving attention management skills critical to safe performance. The research will strengthen Australia's reputation for cut ....How attention and memory for past events interact in determining performance in an air traffic control conflict detection task. This project addresses the priority of safeguarding Australian transportation systems because it concerns failures of attention or memory as sources of human error in aviation. Outcomes will inform the development of training exercises aimed at improving attention management skills critical to safe performance. The research will strengthen Australia's reputation for cutting edge research that extends basic science to applied domains, as this project is one of few world-wide investigating attention and memory processes in multi-item display tasks. More broadly, the project will provide insight into why individuals can make errors when basing decisions on past experience. Read moreRead less
Managing the risks posed by Artificial General Intelligence. It is widely acknowledged that a failure to implement appropriate controls for the next generation of Artificial Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), could have catastrophic consequences, including in the worst case - the extinction of the human race. This research aims to forecast the risks associated with AGI systems and identify the controls required to ensure that risks and existential threats are minimised. The exp ....Managing the risks posed by Artificial General Intelligence. It is widely acknowledged that a failure to implement appropriate controls for the next generation of Artificial Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), could have catastrophic consequences, including in the worst case - the extinction of the human race. This research aims to forecast the risks associated with AGI systems and identify the controls required to ensure that risks and existential threats are minimised. The expected outputs will provide designers, organisations, regulators and governments with a framework to support the design, implementation, and management of safe and efficient AGI systems. This will ensure that the potential far-reaching benefits of AGI are realised without undue threat to society.Read moreRead less
Functional Assessment of Head-eye Coordination during Driving. 238 people per 100,000 population were hospitalized and 9 people per 100,000 died as a result of road-transport related injury in Australia in 2002. We will address this issue by assessing the head eye coordination strategies for young drivers, for proficient drivers and for aged drivers to determine those behaviors and strategies that are associated with various levels of performance. This insight could be affectively communicated t ....Functional Assessment of Head-eye Coordination during Driving. 238 people per 100,000 population were hospitalized and 9 people per 100,000 died as a result of road-transport related injury in Australia in 2002. We will address this issue by assessing the head eye coordination strategies for young drivers, for proficient drivers and for aged drivers to determine those behaviors and strategies that are associated with various levels of performance. This insight could be affectively communicated to others and would provide the basis for educational material and methods that would improve operator skill, safety, and performance. These individual improvements would provide overall benefits such as improved transport efficiency, reduced accident rates, saved lives and a reduction in related social costs.Read moreRead less
Understanding and improving sustained attention under vigilance conditions. This project aims to address a major global challenge caused by technological advances: human operators have to monitor computer-control (e.g., in autonomous vehicles, rail and airtraffic control) but sustaining attention is very difficult under these conditions. Developing innovative behavioural and neural methods, this internationally collaborative project bridges basic and applied science to understand lapses of atten ....Understanding and improving sustained attention under vigilance conditions. This project aims to address a major global challenge caused by technological advances: human operators have to monitor computer-control (e.g., in autonomous vehicles, rail and airtraffic control) but sustaining attention is very difficult under these conditions. Developing innovative behavioural and neural methods, this internationally collaborative project bridges basic and applied science to understand lapses of attention under monitoring conditions. It creates a novel intervention, based on brain activity patterns, to improve performance. Outcomes will increase our neural understanding of attention and lay a foundation for a novel system to detect lapses of attention in high-risk environments, preventing errors before they occur.Read moreRead less
A Scalable Theory of Behavior Composition for Practical Engineering Models of Human Performance. Minimizing human error and maximizing human performance is a major design goal in safety critical systems. The development of methods for affordable human performance modeling has widespread applicability for evaluating user-system interfaces. The compositional method explored here has been shown to make accurate predictions reduce model development time by an order of magnitude. Large safety critica ....A Scalable Theory of Behavior Composition for Practical Engineering Models of Human Performance. Minimizing human error and maximizing human performance is a major design goal in safety critical systems. The development of methods for affordable human performance modeling has widespread applicability for evaluating user-system interfaces. The compositional method explored here has been shown to make accurate predictions reduce model development time by an order of magnitude. Large safety critical applications, such as military or air traffic control systems, would benefit greatly. The proposed work tests whether the compositional methods will scale to more complex domains. The work will be coordinated with Australian industry, academia, and government research efforts.Read moreRead less
A Method for Analysis of Complexity in Cognitive Processes: Applications to Prediction of Industrial Workloads. The project will develop a method for analysis of cognitive complexity in human and animal cognition. It will contribute to basic research because it will enable equivalences and relative complexities of cognitive functions to be determined, independent of content or methodology. It will have applications to education, because it enables complexities of concepts to be recognised and a ....A Method for Analysis of Complexity in Cognitive Processes: Applications to Prediction of Industrial Workloads. The project will develop a method for analysis of cognitive complexity in human and animal cognition. It will contribute to basic research because it will enable equivalences and relative complexities of cognitive functions to be determined, independent of content or methodology. It will have applications to education, because it enables complexities of concepts to be recognised and appropriate pedagogies determined. It also has application to human factors, especially industrial performance and decision making. It will advance on currrent methods because it enables workload to be analysed and predicted, so that it can be factored into job and system design. Read moreRead less
A method for analysis of cognitive complexity: Applications to reasoning, learning and to industrial workloads. The project will develop a method for analysis of cognitive complexity in humans and animals. It will contribute to basic research because it will enable equivalences and relative complexities of cognitive functions to be determined, independent of content or methodology. It has application to human factors, especially in aviation and command and control tasks generally. It will adv ....A method for analysis of cognitive complexity: Applications to reasoning, learning and to industrial workloads. The project will develop a method for analysis of cognitive complexity in humans and animals. It will contribute to basic research because it will enable equivalences and relative complexities of cognitive functions to be determined, independent of content or methodology. It has application to human factors, especially in aviation and command and control tasks generally. It will advance on currrent methods because it enables workload to be analysed and predicted, so that it can be factored into job and system design. It will also have applications to education, because it enables complexities of concepts to be recognised and appropriate pedagogies determined.Read moreRead less