Research Interests
human-robot interaction, human-robot teaming, autonomous vehicles, trust in automation, situation awareness, shared mental models
Optimizing Human-Robot Team Situation Awareness
For human-robot teams to work effectively, each agent on the team should have an understanding of what their teammates are doing, why they are doing it, and what they are likely to do next. I am actively working on a user study to determine how team situation awareness can be improved with a particular interest in shared mental models and communication. The goal is to use this information to then create a model for team situation awareness that can be used for situation awareness enhancement.
Trust-Based Task Allocation Method for use in Heterogenous Human-Robot Teams
In heterogenous human-robot teams where agents are working towards a common goal, there is a need to allocate indivisible tasks to agents on the team. Along with my co-authors, I developed a novel task allocation method that is based on trust in the agent.
This work is detailed in an article published in Scientific Reports.
Driver Takeover Study in Highly Automated Vehicles
In highly automated vehicles, a driver is required to takeover control from the automated system and manually drive in the event of a situation automation cannot handle. Until autonomy is perfected, a driver’s input is mission critical. However, it is possible the driver became occupied with an alternate, non-driving related task and no longer has the proper situation awareness to safely takeover driving before automation is disengaged. The purpose of this study was to understand how common non-driving related tasks impact a driver’s takeover performance.
To study the effects of non-driving related tasks on takeover performance, important non-driving related tasks were determined through a questionnaire and a realistic driving simulator was constructed. This work is documented in an paper at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Additional details on the background literature, takeover study, and preliminary results are documented in my Honors College thesis.