Use Your Illusion? Investigation of a Perceptual Training Method for Pilots in a Visual Approach Task
Michael T. Curtis, M.A., Institute for Simulation
& Training/UCF Department of Psychology
Thursday, Nov 12, 2009
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Room 209
Partnership II Building, 3100 Technology Pkwy,
Orlando
The approach and landing phase of flight is widely recognized as one of the most difficult phases of flight for a pilot or air crew. More specifically, training professionals in the aviation industry have repeatedly reported difficulty in training inexperienced pilots on execution of the visual approach flight maneuver. In line with these reports, a research program at IST’s Team Performance Laboratory has targeted the development and testing of supplemental training protocols to improve pilot performance in a visual approach task.
The focus of this presentation will be on the development
and testing of a Discrimination Training Module
(DTM) designed to improve pilot perception of critical
cues that occur during a visual approach. With this
in mind the discussion will center on the theoretical
basis for this  novel training methodology, presentation
of findings from initial research, discussion of
ongoing research, and a look to future research
on this topic.
Michael Curtis received his B.A. in psychology
in 2001 and a post-baccalaureate certificate in
human technology interaction in 2004 from the University
of Kentucky. Mike also received a M.A. in human
factors psychology from the University of Central
Florida (UCF) in 2008, where he is currently a doctoral
candidate in the Applied Experimental Human Factors
Ph.D. program. Mike has worked on a range of human
factors topics spanning from product design to robotics.
His main focus lies, however, in the aviation domain.
Working as a senior research associate at the Team
Performance Laboratory (TPL) with Dr. Florian Jentsch,
his research mainly entails topics involving cockpit
and crew team behavior, pilot training, and pilot
performance measurement.
Mixed Reality: Basic Research
and Applications at the Media Convergence Laboratory
Charlie
Hughes and Eileen
Smith,
Institute for Simulation
& Training
Thursday, Oct 29, 2009
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Room 209
Partnership II Building, 3100 Technology Pkwy,
Orlando
  Mixed Reality (MR), the blending of real and virtual
worlds, is central to most of the projects and basic
research taking place at MCL. Charlie will give
an introduction to the topic, discussing the continuum
from the virtual to the real that is the domain
of MR.
He will give examples of projects taking
place across this continuum, emphasizing the technologies
and basic research that support these applications.
Specifically, he will describe projects that address
performance assessment/improvement including situational
awareness and physical/cognitive rehabilitation.
Eileen will then discuss the lab's activities
in experiential learning. Specifically, she will
describe a project in which we developing kiosks
for the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort
Lauderdale, and our work in teacher assessment and
preparation..
Applying the Science of Teams
to Inform Policy and Research on Team Science
Stephen
Fiore, PhD, Institute for Simulation
& Training
Thursday, Oct 3, 2009
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Room 209
Partnership II Building, 3100 Technology Pkwy, Orlando
 Science has long recognized the difficulty associated
with interdisciplinary research – yet we continually
struggle with overcoming the challenges arising
from interdisciplinary interaction. In this presentation
I discuss interdisciplinary research in the context
of team science and how to develop a complementary
basic and applied research agenda supporting a broad
swath of group and team researchers. Comparisons
between interdisciplinary research and other forms
of cross-disciplinary research are made along with
a brief discussion of the development of this concept.
The primary argument is that interdisciplinary research
is essentially team research, that is, research
conducted by a team. I show how it may be possible
to consider the implementation of principles from
teamwork and team training to improve interdisciplinary
research and the practice of team science.
Does Size Matter? Investigating
the Utility of 1:35 Scale Models for Training
Military Vehicle Recognition
Joseph Keebler, Ph.D., Institute for Simulation
& Training
Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Room 208
Partnership II Building, 3100 Technology Pkwy,
Orlando
 This presentation will discuss a series of studies
conducted as part of a collaboration between IST’s
Team Performance Laboratory and ACTIVE Lab. The
research involved investigation of the perceptual
processes involved in target recognition to improve
training and minimize fratricide. The overall goal
was to examine the viability of 1:35 scale models
as training aids to facilitate detection of friend/foe
targets. Via a multi-disciplinary approach, the
research examined training outcomes when scaled
models are compared to other methods of military
training, including military issued graphic training
aids and vehicles taken from a Deployable Virtual
Environment. An overview will be presented of findings
from a series of five studies, across both laboratory
and virtual environment contexts, along with Functional
Near-Infrared Imaging data which examined neural
correlates of military vehicle identification in
the parietal lobe.
Joseph Keebler is pursuing his Ph.D. in Human Factors
Psychology at UCF, working under the direction of
Dr. Florian Jentsch. His main areas of research
include cognition, perception and expertise, specifically
as they apply to object recognition, and human robot
teaming. He has published on the topic of cognition
in combat and presented on fratricide and combat
misidentification. Recently he has been investigating
the utility of Functional Near Infrared Technology
as a means to better understand learning and training.
Unmanned Air Vehicles in US Airspace
Randall Shumaker, Ph.D., Institute for Simulation
& Training
Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009
11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Partnership II Building, 3100 Technology Pkwy, Orlando
 In recent years there have been major advances
in many aspects of technology to build a variety
of unmanned vehicles. While most are remotely
operated, there has also been significant success
in creating vehicles capable of fully autonomous
operation in complex environments.
But these technical developments have created a
huge demand by government, industry, and academic
sectors to operate unmanned air vehicles within
the US airspace for applications ranging from long-range
transportation of cargo, pipeline and power line
inspection, research of many kinds, to hobbyists.
As such, there is a high probability that unmanned
aircraft will be operating over our heads within
the next few years.
In this talk Dr. Shumaker discusses these developments
as they relate to taking this major step in unmanned
vehicle deployment. He outlines some of UCF’s current
research and development in unmanned vehicles and
provide background information on how air operations
work in the US. He also includes discussion of
the regulatory and operational implications of research
in this area – which has, heretofore, focused on
operations in highly controlled situations and for
special purposes.
If you are interested in research opportunities
in this domain, or even curious about the implications
of an unmanned FEDEX cargo aircraft landing on the
runway after your USAIR flight touches down, or
the potential issues associated with small unmanned
(up to 45 KG) aircraft operating over your house,
you should attend this talk.
Randall Shumaker, Ph.D. directs the operations
of the Institute for Simulation & Training.
Previously Superintendent, Information Technology
Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington,
DC, he brings considerable expertise in human-machine
interface and artificial intelligence to the institute
and UCF.
His personal research interests include
artificial intelligence, biomorphic computing methods,
and advanced techniques for software development.
As a former Presidential rank Senior Executive,
US Voting Member in the NATO IST Panel, and frequent
reviewer and advisor for military research programs,
he has significant insight into military and high
consequence civilian applications of technology.
He has had significant success in transitioning
research from academia into government and industry.
Shumaker is the author of more than fifty scientific
publications and is a frequent speaker on a variety
of technical topics. He has served as a reviewer
for several professional publications and for federal
agencies including DARPA, DDR&E, ONR, NASA,
and ARL. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science
from the University of Pennsylvania, is a Professional
Engineer, and a Commercial Pilot, SEL, MEL, IA.
Vision of
the Centers
Dr. Glenn Boreman
Trustee Chair Professor in the UCF College of Optics and Photonics
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
11:00 a.m.
Nanoscience Center, 12424 Research Parkway, Suite
435
45-minute presentation followed by 15 minute of discussion
Glenn Boreman received the B.S.
degree in optics from the University of Rochester
and the Ph.D. in optical sciences from the University
of Arizona. He joined the UCF faculty in 1984 as
an assistant professor of Electrical Engineering.
He is currently Trustee Chair Professor in the College
of Optics & Photonics, with doctoral-student supervision
privileges also in Electrical Engineering, Physics,
and Materials Science. He has supervised 17 doctoral
students to completion at UCF. His research concentrates
on the development of high-frequency electromagnetic
sensing devices using direct-write electron beam
lithography. He is coauthor of Infrared Detectors
and Systems (Wiley), author of Basic Electro-Optics
for Electrical Engineers (SPIE Press) and Modulation
Transfer Function in Optical and Electro-Optical
Systems (SPIE Press). Prof. Boreman served 6 years
as Editor-in-Chief of Applied Optics; and is a senior
member of IEEE, a fellow of the Optical Society of
America (OSA) and a fellow of the Society of Photo-Optical
Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).
Cognitive Simulation: The Maryland Virtual Patient (MVP)
Sergei Nirenburg, Marjorie McShane, Stephen Beale
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Bruce Jarrell, George Fantry
University of Maryland School of Medicine
Monday, March 16, 2009
11:30 a.m.
A 45-minute presentation will be followed by 15 minutes of discussion
The Maryland Virtual Patient (MVP) is an electronic environment designed for trainees to rehearse and perfect the mental aspects of medical decision-making. This simulated environment aims to recreate the real life medical situation that is among our most effective learning situations; direct patient care in a teaching hospital or clinic. In this
situation, a trainee communicates with a patient, interprets test results and images, establishes a diagnosis, develops a plan with the patient, performs interventions and observes responses to treatments, all while under the supervision of a clinician-teacher. Throughout the process, sophisticated language-based exchanges occur between the patient,
teacher and trainee. Both the patient-trainee interaction, as well as the teacher-trainee interaction, stimulate the trainee to define problems, synthesize solutions and recognize personal knowledge shortcomings. These cognitive and metacognitive processes result in highly educational experiences.
Overview of MVP:
In order to create a simulation environment that enables these processes, two essential design requirements are needed: the creation of electronic patients; and an electronic forum for communicative exchanges in English to occur between patient and trainee. Both requirements are functional in the MVP.
To create electronic patients, the MVP environment processes encoded deep medical knowledge using artificial intelligence software in a multi-agent network to generate Virtual Patients (VPs) as instances. These VP instances demonstrate realistic physiological and medical findings that evolve over time in an automatic way. The VPs also react appropriately
to trainee chosen medical interventions, whether correct or incorrect. The combination of the depth and complexity of the VP along with the trainee’s actions results in a dynamic, open-ended process where many VP outcomes are possible.
To create an electronic forum for a two-way conversation between VP and trainee, the MVP environment uses natural language processing technology to assign meaning to trainee input. Once the input is interpreted, the VP formulates a response, also in natural language, to return to the trainee. This response is electronically generated through intelligent
reasoning that considers the trainee input request, MVP deep medical knowledge, VP physiological traits, and VP intellectual traits and social values.
A third design component of the MVP is to enable a two-way conversation between a trainee and an electronic teacher. Although not as well developed as the VP discussed above, the intelligent virtual teacher in the MVP is capable of evaluating the trainee’s performance real-time and providing selected feedback and suggestions, also in natural language.
This capability will become more developed as additional knowledge is added to the system.
Technical Accomplishments in the MVP:
MVP technical elements are in various stages of refinement and include:
- A knowledge repository containing medical and pedagogical information which is amenable to machine reasoning
- Software capable of reasoning with the knowledge, interpreting trainee language input to the VP and generating VP language output to the trainee
- A knowledge-based model of the human body in health and disease, and the software to use the model to create a VP and have it function autonomously, over time and in response to trainee interventions
- A similar model of human intellectual traits and social values that are important in health maintenance, disease development and disease management, and that are chosen because they are educationally important for a trainee to learn and manage
- Medical knowledge-based and pedagogically-based models of an intelligent virtual teacher
- Software capable of enabling a conversation-based interaction between the trainee, the virtual patient and the virtual teacher using human language
Currently, we have VPs suffering from nine complex esophageal diseases that progress over time. They behave in a clinically appropriate fashion and possess a complexity that challenges clinical skills at the level of a senior GI fellow. Other possible conditions including TBI and PTSD are being considered for additional development.
Research at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies
Randall Hill, Jr., PhD, Executive Director
Friday, January 30, 2009
11:00 a.m.
A 45-minute presentation will be followed by 15 minutes of discussion
The University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies is revolutionizing learning through the development of interactive digital media.
Collaborating with entertainment industry neighbors, ICT produces virtual humans, computer training simulations and immersive experiences for decision-making, cultural awareness, leadership and health.
Randall (Randy) Hill,
Jr., Executive Director, graduated with a
Bachelor of Science degree from the United States
Military Academy at West Point in 1978 and subsequently
served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army
for six years with assignments in field artillery
and military intelligence.
Dr. Hill joined NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 1984. There he became a technical group supervisor and the work area manager for network automation in NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) Advanced Technology Program. While at JPL, he earned his
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 1987 and 1993, respectively. His doctoral thesis showed how intelligent tutoring systems can be used in interactive simulations to assist students in learning how to operate complex equipment.
Dr. Hill joined the USC Information Sciences Institute in 1995, where he worked with Paul Rosenbloom, Milind Tambe and Jonathan Gratch on the development of models of human behavior and decision-making for real-time simulation environments. He joined
the USC Institute for Creative Technologies in June 2000 as a Senior Scientist and was involved with research on virtual humans and immersive learning environments. In December 2004, Dr. Hill became Director of Applied Research and Transition. In this position, one of his greatest accomplishments was forging stronger ties between entertainment industry
and technology developers to create engaging immersive learning environments. Most notably, he led the Army Excellence in Leadership (AXL) and Enhanced Learning Environments with Creative Technologies (ELECT) projects at the Institute. In October of 2006, Dr. Hill was named the Executive Director of the ICT.
Dr. Hill is a research assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at USC. He is a member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and he has served on the Program Committees for the Eighteenth Conference on
Innovative Applications for Artificial Intelligence (June 2006, Boston, MA), the Fifteenth Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (May 2006, Baltimore, MD), and the Sixth International Working Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents hosted by the ICT (August 2006, Marina Del Rey, CA). Dr. Hill has over fifty technical
publications, including a co-au- thored article, "Toward Virtual Humans" featured in AI Magazine in Summer 2006.
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UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
