Dr. Randy Mumaw is a Senior Research Associate at San Jose State University, working in the Aerospace Cognitive Engineering Lab at NASA Ames Research Center. He has a PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Mumaw’s career has focused on operator performance in complex, safety-critical systems. He has worked in the domains of air traffic control, nuclear power plant operations, and commercial jet transports. Previous employers included Westinghouse and Boeing. Dr Mumaw’s research and projects have included accident investigation, error analysis, system safety and risk analysis, training for complex skills, display and workstation design, automation design, and operational procedures. He is an author on 14 US patents.
Talk title (Dr. Randy Mumaw): the Death of Airmanship: The Urgent Need to Understand Pilot Skills and Knowledge
Abstract: Aviation awards a special name—airmanship—for the quality of being highly competent in foundational piloting skills, which seem to comprise primarily judgment, decision making, stick-and-rudder skills, and a bit of intuition. The term, which has a mystical quality, has historically resisted analysis; airmanship is acquired solely through experience. The graying of the Boomers and the extreme turbulence of the last few years in commercial aviation have led to a significant loss of those pilots who started out in simpler, round-dial airplanes and made a tortured transition to glass. Those pilots were comfortable disengaging the autopilot at any time, and more importantly, they continued to stay mentally engaged with flight and systems management even as automation continued to encroach on traditional pilot roles. As an industry, we need to prepare for the loss of these pilots by understanding the elements of airmanship and finding a way to replace the competency. The goal is to eliminate “airmanship” by understanding it . . . by demystifying it. Human factors and cognitive engineering offer tools and methods to develop a system interface that supports skilled performance from the human/technology team. In this presentation, I will talk about my efforts to understand the elements of skilled performance so that they can be trained, or supported by the interface in a seamless manner. Specific topics will include the limits of SOP, monitoring for flight path management, alerting non-normals, and autoflight/mode confusion.
Dr. Fabien Lotte is a research director (DR2) at the Inria Center at the University of Bordeaux. He holds a PhD (INSA Rennes, 2008) and an Habilitation to Supervise Research in Computer Science (Univ. Bordeaux, 2016). Fabien Lotte is a specialist in Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) and EEG brain signal processing. He is or has been a member of the editorial boards of several leading journals on BCI (Brain-Computer Interfaces, Journal of Neural Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering), a specialty chief editor of Frontiers in Neuroergonomics: Neurotechnology and Systems Neuroergonomics and co-edited two books on the subject in 2016 and 2018. He notably coordinated or is coordinating the ANR REBEL project (2016-2019), the ANR Proteus project (2023-2026), the ERC Starting Grant BrainConquest project (2017-2022) or the ERC Proof-of-Concept project SPEARS (2023-2025). He has published more than 200 papers in this field. He is the laureate of the 2022 international USERN (Universal Science and Education Research Network) prize in formal science, and of the 2023 Lovelace-Babbage prize from the French academy of science in collaboration with the French Computer Science Society (SIF).
Talk Title (Fabien Lotte): Brain-Computer Interactions: Principles, Hypes and Hopes
Abstract: Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are systems that translates users' brain activity, typically measured using ElectroEncephaloGraphy (EEG), into commands for an application. For instance, they can be used to move a computer cursor on screen towards the left or right by having users imagining left or right hand movements, recognized from EEG signals. They appear very promising for numerous applications, that will be described in this talk, including assistive technologies for motor-impaired users, video games or neuroadaptive technologies, adapting the interaction content (e.g., exercice difficulty during a training task or number of information to monitor for plane pilots) to the users' mental states (e.g., mental workload or fatigue). Despite such promises, BCIs are however still scarcely used outside laboratories, mainly due to a lack of reliability. They indeed often recognize erroneous commands from the users, a subtantial proportion of users are unable to use them, and they have decoding performances that vary widely both between users but also within users (e.g., across days for the same user). Thus, this talk will give an overview of BCI technologies, about how they work, what they can do and be used for, and what they cannot do or be used for (at least not yet). In other words, this talk will cover the principles, hypes and hopes of BCIs.
