Salient Feature of Haptic-Based Guidance of People in Low Visibility Environments Using Hard Reins

This paper presents salient features of human–human interaction where one person with limited auditory and visual perception of the environment (a follower) is guided by an agent with full perceptual capabilities (a guider) via a hard rein along a given path. We investigate several salient features of the interaction between the guider and follower such as: 1) the order of an autoregressive (AR) control policy that maps states of the follower to actions of the guider; 2) how the guider may modulate the pulling force in response to the trust level of the follower; and 3) how learning may successively apportion the responsibility of control across different muscles of the guider. Based on experimental systems identification on human demonstrations from ten pairs of naive subjects, we show that guiders tend to adopt a third-order AR predictive control policy and followers tend to adopt second-order reactive control policy. Moreover, the extracted guider’s control policy was implemented and validated by human–robot interaction experiments. By modeling the follower’s dynamics with a time varying virtual damped inertial system, we found that it is the coefficient of virtual damping which is most sensitive to the trust level of the follower. We used these experimental insights to derive a novel controller that integrates an optimal order control policy with a push/pull force modulator in response to the trust level of the follower monitored using a time varying virtual damped inertial model

The Naturalistic Flight Deck System: An Integrated System Concept for Improved Single-Pilot Operations

This paper reviews current and emerging operational experiences, technologies, and human-machine interaction theories to develop an integrated flight system concept designed to increase the safety, reliability, and performance of single-pilot operations in an increasingly accommodating but stringent national airspace system. This concept, know as the Naturalistic Flight Deck (NFD), uses a form of human-centered automation known as complementary-automation (or complemation) to structure the relationship between the human operator and the aircraft as independent, collaborative agents having complimentary capabilities. The human provides commonsense knowledge, general intelligence, and creative thinking, while the machine contributes specialized intelligence and control, extreme vigilance, resistance to fatigue, and encyclopedic memory. To support the development of the NFD, an initial Concept of Operations has been created and selected normal and non-normal scenarios are presented in this document

Calling the Shots: Women’s Photographic Engagement with War in Hemispheric America, 1910–1990

War photography is conventionally understood to be a hypermasculine practice, undertaken by risk-taking photojournalists in the combat zone. Despite growing scholarship on the fields of photography, war, and gender, there remains little that considers war’s photographic dimension as a charged arena for gender relations. This intellectual limitation impedes understanding of women’s agency and substantial participation at the nexus of war and photography. Rather than single out exceptional female exponents, or offer an essentialist view of ‘feminine’ traits, I show how the discursive construction of war photography is hostile to the participation of women, rendering their activities invalid. A twofold theoretical and methodological innovation redefines the conception of war photography to make it adequate to women's activities, and offers the model of ‘engagement’ to account for a wider range of interactions with photography beyond professional photojournalism. A series of case studies, drawn from hemispheric America between 1910 and 1990, reveals the ways in which women have negotiated gendered constraints to photographically engage with war. The conflicts considered (the Mexican Revolution, US participation in the Second World War, the Sandinista Revolution and Contra War, and Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’) enable analysis of distinct modes of warfare undertaken in diverse localities and historical moments. The artefacts examined – photographic postcards of firing squad victims, placards used in protests, propaganda pamphlets and fashion magazines amongst others – demonstrate the importance of conceiving photography a material and social practice. While women rarely operate in the 'Capa mode' of hypermasculine war photographer, they presistently find photographic means to forcefully assert their status as central and active participants in war and politics, rather than bystanders of history

The Playful Citizen

This edited volume collects current research by academics and practitioners on playful citizen participation through digital media technologies

The Playful Citizen

This edited volume collects current research by academics and practitioners on playful citizen participation through digital media technologies