Our research in human factors has been or is currently funded by industry and government including Google, John Deere, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
See recently published research on the Publications page.
To get a sense of the general research conducted by the lab, see the Publications section or the table of student’s theses and dissertations below.
Human Interaction with Autonomous Systems
Automation is, “the execution by a machine agent (usually a computer) of a function that was previously carried out by a human” (Parasuraman & Riley, 1997). Examples of automation include global positioning systems (GPS) that tell a driver the best path to take, or medical and health decision aids that analyze a myriad of factors and instruct the doctor or patient on the best course of action to follow.
Our current research on this topic is examining the factors that affect how users perceive and behave with automation, including robots:
- Individual and age differences that affects trust and performance with automated technology
- How the design or appearance of the technology affects trust with automated technology
- Reducing or eliminating individual and age differences in performance with automated technology through design
Dr. Pak’s talk on Designing the future of autonomy and autonomous systems
Dr. Pak discusses the lab’s automation research on Clemson’s web series On the table
Student’s Research
| Student | Year/status | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Dissertations | ||
| Nicole Fink | 2013 | Picture Superiority effect in prospective memory: Examining the influence of age and attentional load |
| Jeremy Mendel | 2012 | Understanding the Relative Attentional Demands of the Dimensions of Interface Consistency |
| Margaux Price | 2012 | Preventing misuse and disuse of automated systems: Effects of system confidence display on trust and decision performance |
| Masters Theses | ||
| William Leidheiser | Proposed 2015 | The effects of age and working memory demands on automation-induced complacency |
| Jessica Branyon | Proposed 2015 | Investigating Older Adults’ Trust; Causal Attributions; and Perception of Capabilities in Robots as a Function of Robot Appearance; Task; and Reliability |
| Natalee Cartee | 2014 | The effects of reminder distinctiveness,and anticipatory interval on prospective memory |
| Brock Bass | 2013 | Faces as Ambient Displays: Assessing the Attention-Demanding Characteristics of Facial Expressions |
| Nicole Fink | 2010 | Prospective memory in the nursing environment: The effect of event-based and time-based prospective load. |
| Jeremy Mendel | 2009 | The effect of interface consistency and cognitive load on user performance in an information search task. |
| Margaux Price | 2010 | Complex Decision Support for Older Adults: Effects of Information Visualization on Decision Performance |
