Multiple scientists and engineers from Charles River Analytics are set to present work and participate at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), taking place virtually from October 5-9, 2020. The Annual Meeting typically hosts over 1500 attendees and 600 technical presentations on current research, according to the conference website.
Human factors researchers study how to best design products and systems for the people who use them. The factors of a technology that affect its human use must be considered, whether those are the incline of a chair seat or the presentation of data in a graphical user interface.
Staff at Charles River apply human factors experience on a wide range of projects. Principal Scientist Stephanie Kane recently completed a project that investigated the software interface design for swarms of autonomous drones. In her proof-of-concept design, soldiers use augmented reality displays to interact with the swarm.
On October 9, at 12 p.m. Central Time (CT), Kane will take part in a related panel discussion entitled, “Human Factors Issues and Challenges in Research on ‘Many-Agent’ Control Applications.”
“I’ll talk about the challenges [of human swarm systems],” Kane said. “As swarm systems come online, we can’t just make new ones; we have to say—what’s the role of the human? How do we make them work with the human well? This is a venue to do that.”
Also on October 9, at 2 p.m. CT, there will be a paper presentation entitled “Exploring the Complexities of Trauma Care Flow and Documentation,” with Scientist Timothy McEwen a coauthor.
On October 8, at 4 p.m. CT, Principal Scientist Bethany Bracken will be participating in a panel discussion entitled “Transdisciplinary Team Research to Develop Theory of Mind in Human-AI teams.” On October 9, at 2 p.m. CT, she will present a talk, “Development of Human-Out-of-the-Loop Participant Recruitment, Data Collection, Data Handling, and Participant Management System,” which covers work performed under DARPA’s WASH program.
In past years, Charles River Analytics has also sponsored the conference, assisted in local organization when the conference was held in Boston, and had senior staff assigned to present conference awards.
