41 research outputs found
Preferential Processing of Social Features and Their Interplay with Physical Saliency in Complex Naturalistic Scenes
Own-race and own-age biases facilitate visual awareness of faces under interocular suppression
The detection of a face in a visual scene is the first stage in the face
processing hierarchy. Although all subsequent, more elaborate face processing
depends on the initial detection of a face, surprisingly little is known about
the perceptual mechanisms underlying face detection. Recent evidence suggests
that relatively hard-wired face detection mechanisms are broadly tuned to all
face-like visual patterns as long as they respect the typical spatial
configuration of the eyes above the mouth. Here, we qualify this notion by
showing that face detection mechanisms are also sensitive to face shape and
facial surface reflectance properties. We used continuous flash suppression
(CFS) to render faces invisible at the beginning of a trial and measured the
time upright and inverted faces needed to break into awareness. Young
Caucasian adult observers were presented with faces from their own race or
from another race (race experiment) and with faces from their own age group or
from another age group (age experiment). Faces matching the observers’ own
race and age group were detected more quickly. Moreover, the advantage of
upright over inverted faces in overcoming CFS, i.e., the face inversion effect
(FIE), was larger for own-race and own-age faces. These results demonstrate
that differences in face shape and surface reflectance influence access to
awareness and configural face processing at the initial detection stage.
Although we did not collect data from observers of another race or age group,
these findings are a first indication that face detection mechanisms are
shaped by visual experience with faces from one’s own social group. Such
experience-based fine-tuning of face detection mechanisms may equip in-group
faces with a competitive advantage for access to conscious awareness
Backward Evolving Quantum States
The basic concept of the two-state vector formalism, which is the time
symmetric approach to quantum mechanics, is the backward evolving quantum
state. However, due to the time asymmetry of the memory's arrow of time, the
possible ways to manipulate a backward evolving quantum state differ from those
for a standard, forward evolving quantum state. The similarities and the
differences between forward and backward evolving quantum states regarding the
no-cloning theorem, nonlocal measurements, and teleportation are discussed. The
results are relevant not only in the framework of the two-state vector
formalism, but also in the framework of retrodictive quantum theory.Comment: Contribution to the J.Phys. A special issue in honor of GianCarlo
Ghirard
Gender differences in noise concerns about civil drones
Rapid technological developments provide people with an increasing number of opportunities for applying civil drones (e.g., rescue operations). However, one crucial aspect for the future use of drones will be their public acceptance. Importantly, drone acceptance is considered to substantially rely on noise concerns. Recent research demonstrated differences between certain groups of individuals (e.g., females vs. males) in their attitudes towards civil drones. By means of a representative telephone survey in Germany (n = 832), we aimed at further investigating the influence of gender on drone acceptance. Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) revealed noise concerns to be the most important of all assessed concerns for explaining female respondents’ attitudes towards civil drones, while concerns about damages/injuries best explained male participants’ attitudes. Moreover, our survey corroborates prior studies by showing males to be less concerned about civil drones than females (e.g., regarding noise). Additionally, we explored whether these effects could have been driven by confounding variables (e.g., drone experience). Thus, the present study highlights aspects of gender differences in concerns about drones which need to be examined further in future research
Public acceptance and noise considerations in urban air mobility research - Intermediate results of DLR's HorizonUAM project
The project "HorizonUAM - Urban Air Mobility Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR)" pools existing competencies of eleven institutes within DLR. The project combines the research about urban air mobility (UAM) vehicles or air taxis, the corresponding infrastructure, the operation of UAM services, as well as the public acceptance of future urban air transportation. The analysis of flight guidance concepts and the sequencing of air taxis at vertidromes is a central part of the project. Selected concepts for flight guidance, communication and navigation technology are demonstrated with drones in a scaled urban scenario.
The HorizonUAM project has started in 2020 and will run until mid-2023. Among the highlights of the first half of the research project are first vehicle fleet pre-designs including cabin interior design and the installation of a mixed reality UAM cabin simulator. A rating method for the design of starting and landing areas, so called vertidromes, has been established and a first capacity analysis was conducted for vertidrome integration at the airport of Hamburg, Germany. Furthermore, a virtual reality study on the acceptance of drones and air taxis flying over pedestrians in an urban setting has been completed with 47 subjects. An online survey among UAM stakeholders from unmanned aviation associations, research and industry confirmed the assumptions on the use cases defined within HorizonUAM: airport shuttle, suburban commuter, intra-city, inter-city and mega-city.
This keynote gives an overview of the research covered in the HorizonUAM project with special focus on the topics of public acceptance and noise
Experiencing Urban Air Mobility: How Passengers evaluate a simulated flight with an Air Taxi
For the successful development and implementation of novel concepts and
technology, the acceptance of potential users is crucial. Therefore, within the
project HorizonUAM, we investigated passengers' acceptance of air taxis. One
challenge is that not many people have real experiences with urban air mobility
(UAM) at the moment and thus requirements formulated by potential users refer
to rather abstract concepts. To allow participants to gain realistic
impressions of UAM concepts, a Mixed Reality Air Taxi Simulator was set up. It
allows participants to experience an inner-city business shuttle flight. A
study with 30 participants assessed the information needs and the influence of
another person on board on wellbeing in nominal situations (experiment 1) as
well as one non-nominal situation (experiment 2). For the latter, participants
experienced a re-routing of the flight due to an unavailability of landing
sites at the vertidrome. During and after the flights, participants answered
questionnaires and extensive interviews were conducted. The study produced
first empirical data on relevant factors regarding interaction, information
needs and comfort within an air taxi. The findings show that passengers want to
be informed about intentions of the vehicle. The presence of a steward on board
is not necessary but can increase wellbeing especially during non-nominal
situations.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, 8 table
Changes in performance and bio-mathematical model performance predictions during 45 days of sleep restriction in a simulated space mission
Lunar habitation and exploration of space beyond low-Earth orbit will require small crews to live in isolation and confinement while maintaining a high level of performance with limited support from mission control. Astronauts only achieve approximately 6 h of sleep per night, but few studies have linked sleep deficiency in space to performance impairment. We studied crewmembers over 45 days during a simulated space mission that included 5 h of sleep opportunity on weekdays and 8 h of sleep on weekends to characterize changes in performance on the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) and subjective fatigue ratings. We further evaluated how well bio-mathematical models designed to predict performance changes due to sleep loss compared to objective performance. We studied 20 individuals during five missions and found that objective performance, but not subjective fatigue, declined from the beginning to the end of the mission. We found that bio-mathematical models were able to predict average changes across the mission but were less sensitive at predicting individual-level performance. Our findings suggest that sleep should be prioritized in lunar crews to minimize the potential for performance errors. Bio-mathematical models may be useful for aiding crews in schedule design but not for individual-level fitness-for-duty decisions
Assessment of Air Taxi Passenger Acceptance – Implementation and Initial Evaluation of a Mixed Reality Simulator
Urban air mobility paves new ways for public transport modalities like air taxis. To shape the operational concepts and the design of these air taxis, the acceptance and requirements of future passengers should be considered even in early stages of the development process. Within the HorizonUAM project, it is of interest to understand the effects of social presence, e.g. through on-board service personnel, on perceived comfort. These results help to develop concepts, how fully or mainly autonomous operations can be achieved that are accepted by users.
As part of HorizonUAM, an air taxi simulator was implemented to assess the aforementioned passenger acceptance with regard to defined key criteria like presence of on-board personnel or amount of presented information. To create an experience that is as close to a real air taxi flight as possible, recent advancements in head-mounted display technology facilitated the creation of a mixed reality simulation. Mixed reality combines advantages of full-flight simulators like human collaboration and use of analog instruments with those of virtual reality simulators that are cost-effective, highly immersive devices for rapid prototyping.
This paper reports on the work conducted to define and design such a mixed reality simulation to investigate factors of passenger acceptance. First, functional requirements that were defined for a first study of passenger interaction and comfort are presented, as well as the technical requirements that were derived. Additionally, mixed reality technology should be used for the novel simulator to enable high flexibility. Second, as numerable different setups of mixed reality were possible with state-of-the-art technology, four different setups were compared in a pre-study against each other. The empirical results with regards to experienced immersion are presented. Finally, the conclusion from this study regarding the final setup for the mixed reality simulation are presented