Chris Baber

University of Birmingham · School of Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering

The version of distributed situation awareness (DSA) used in this article originated in human factors/ergonomics. Typically, this has involved the study of human operators working in teams and has used various forms of concept maps to qualitatively describe the information that team members use. In this article, we apply the concept of DSA to multi...

The next generation of artificial intelligence, known as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), could either revolutionise or destroy humanity. Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) has a critical role to play in the design of safe and ethical AGI; however, there is little evidence that HFE is contributing to development programs. This paper presents...

In this paper, computational linguistics is applied to define and capture Speech Acts in distributed sensemaking in a military map-exercise. The exercise was performed by teams of three participants playing the role of Company Commanders (assisted by a team of confederates) using either text-only or a combination of voice and text communications, u...

This thesis focuses attention on achieving Distributed Situation Awareness (DSA) with minimal resources (energy, processing cost, etc.) using small low-capacity agents (e.g., UAVs) coordinated in a decentralised fashion while conducting searching activity. This is in contrast to the existing works involving convoluted communication and information...

Human movement variability arises from the process of mastering redundant (bio)mechanical degrees of freedom to successfully accomplish any given motor task where flexibility and stability of many possible joint combinations helps to adapt to environment conditions. While the analysis of movement of variability is becoming increasingly popular as a...

Human movement variability arises from the process of mastering redundant (bio)mechanical degrees of freedom to successfully accomplish any given motor task where stability and flexibility of many possible joint combinations helps to adapt to environment conditions. While the analysis of movement of variability is becoming increasingly useful as a...

This article presents preliminary considerations and results from a research project designed to investigate the relation between (i) gestures, (ii) graphic traces and (iii) perceptions. More specifically, the project aims to test the hypothesis that graphic traces, including handwriting, can set up graphetic empathy between writers and readers of...

Tool use can be considered in terms of purposeful behaviour. This emphasis on ‘purpose’ hides a host of assumptions about the nature of cognition and its relationship with physical activity. In particular, a notion of ‘purpose’ might assume that this is teleological which, in turn, requires a model of a desired end state of an action that can be pr...

Decision support systems (DSSs) are being woven into human workflows from aviation to medicine. In this study, we examine decision quality and visual information foraging for DSSs with different known reliability levels. Thirty-six participants completed a financial fraud detection task, first unsupported and then supported by a DSS which highlight...

In this paper, we describe how to achieve knowledge understanding and prediction (Situation Awareness (SA)) for multiple-agents conducting searching activity using Bayesian inferential reasoning and learning. Bayesian Belief Network was used to monitor agents' knowledge about their environment, and cases are recorded for the network training using...

We describe issues bedeviling the coordination of heterogeneous (different sensors carrying agents) multi-agent missions such as belief conflict, situation reasoning, etc. We applied Bayesian and agents' presumptions inferential reasoning to solve the outlined issues with the heterogeneous multi-agent belief variation and situational-base reasoning...

In this paper, we describe how Bayesian inferential reasoning will contributes in obtaining a well-satisfied prediction for Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems (DCOPs) with uncertainties. We also demonstrate how DCOPs could be merged to multi-agent knowledge understand and prediction (i.e. Situation Awareness). The DCOPs functions were mer...

This is an open communication abstract for ICAART 2020

In this paper, we propose the use of Bayesian inference and learning to solve DCOP in a dynamic and uncertain environment. We categorized the agents Bayesian learning process into local learning and centralized learning. That is, the agents learn individually and collectively to make optimal predictions and share learning data. The agents' mission...

In this paper, we propose an architecture that uses predictions tools obtained via Bayesian learning algorithms to monitor the issues of communication, fault tolerance, and adaptation in human-agent mission. The architecture describes different level of knowledge, planning, and commands differ by their priorities. We tested the model using forest f...

In this paper, we propose a priority-based publish-subscribe approach to tackle reasoning and beliefs conflict in a heterogeneous multi-agent mission. Agents subscribe to other agents' topics and rank them based on the environment adaptability priority values built from agents' situation awareness. Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) was used in maintain...

Knowledge monitoring is a component of metacognition which can help students regulate their own learning. In adaptive learning software, the system’s model of the student can be presented as an open learner model (OLM) which is intended to enable monitoring processes. We explore how presenting alignment, between students’ self-assessed confidence a...

The last few years have seen resurgence in interest within human factors/ergonomics (HFE) in cybernetics. HFE has a long association with cybernetics (e.g., the influence of signal detection and control theory on studies of vigilance, visual search and human-machine systems). The panel will discuss more recent applications of cybernetics and focus...

Credit card fraud analysis is almost entirely automated. However, there may be occasions when a human analyst is required to intervene. In this paper, we consider situations in which a transaction triggers an automated alert but not sufficiently to allow automated response. On such occasions, automated analysis makes a recommendation as to the frau...

In this paper, we report the design, development and initial evaluation of the concept of animate objects (as a form of Tangible User Interface, TUI) to support the cueing of action sequences. Animate objects support user actions through the provision of affordances, and developments in actuator technologies allow those devices to change their phys...

The notion that human activity can be characterised in terms of dynamic systems is a well-established alternative to motor schema approaches. Key to a dynamic systems approach is the idea that a system seeks to achieve stable states in the face of perturbation. While such an approach can apply to physical activity, it can be challenging to accept t...

In this paper, two user interfaces (UIs) are compared for supporting decision making in a road traffic management activity. Both UIs provide the information needed to make critical decisions related to traffic management and are designed according to ecological interface design (EID) concepts. One user interface design also incorporates concepts fr...

Ergonomics has always been concerned with the study of systems, and has developed over the course of fifty or so years a range of methods which allow systems to be described and analysed (Edwards and Lees, 1974; Kleiner and Hendrick, 2002; Wilson, 2014). However, we would argue that perennial problems relate to the study of systems that change with...

Traditional conceptions of ‘creativity’ assume that the creative person is able to imagine a finished product and then bring this forth through their skill in making things. This conception is also used to separate the ‘artist’ from the craft-worker. In this paper, I show how the developing theories of Embodied Cognition can illustrate when and how...

In the field of naturalistic decision making, the data–frame model (DFM) has proven to be a popular and useful way of thinking about sensemaking. DFM provides a parsimonious account of how ‘sensemakers’ interact with the data in their environment to make sense of what is happening. In this paper, however, we argue that it is useful to elaborate DFM...

The question of how people make use of automation to support their decision making is becoming increasingly important. As computers provide ever greater input to the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, so they are more likely to be partners in decision making. However, when automation makes recommendations that the human disagrees with...

User interface (UI) design can affect the quality of decision making, where decisions based on digitally presented content are commonly informed by visually sampling information through eye movements. Analysis of the resulting scan patterns - the order in which people visually attend to different regions of interest (ROIs) - gives an insight into i...

In Visual Analytics, the output of automated analysis is presented to users in an interactive visualisation. By responding to the visualisation, the user is able to modify the parameters of the computer visualisation. This raises questions concerning the design of the visualisation and the level of interaction that is appropriate for users. In this...

In this paper I consider how the concept of “affordance” has been adapted from the original writings of Gibson and applied to interaction design. I argue that a clear understanding of affordance shifts the goal of interaction design from one of solely focusing on either the physical object or the capabilities of the person, toward an understanding...

Plastic surgeons report neck, shoulder and back pain when wearing head-mounted magnifiers (loupes) during operations. There will be many factors contributing to such pain. In order to explore these factors this paper developed a novel application of Multi-objective Optimization (MOO) which used postural constraints on anthropometric models to deter...

In this paper we report a cognitive model of how people make decisions through interaction. The model is based on the assumption that interaction for decision making is an example of a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) in which observations are made by limited perceptual systems that model human foveated vision and decisions are...

In this paper, we present preliminary results for the analysis of movement variability in human-humanoid imitation activities. We applied the state space reconstruction's theorem which help us to have better understanding of the movement variability than other techniques in time or frequency domains. In our experiments, we tested our hypothesis whe...

We explore the ways in which animate objects can be used to cue actions as part of coaching in Activities of Daily Living (ADL). In this case, changing the appearance or behavior of a physical object is intended to cue actions which are appropriate for a given context. The context is defined by the intention of the users, the state of the objects a...

Variability is an inherent feature of human movement, but little research has been done in order to measure such a characteristic using inertial sensors attached to person’s body (wearable sensors). Therefore the aim of this preliminary study is to investigate the assessment of human movement variability for dance activities. We asked thirteen part...

A method for analyzing communication transcripts was employed to explore the relationship between task coherence and operator interactivity as a measure of team and distributed situation awareness. The method takes advantage of the entropy within a system and uses this as a measure of order within the task processes and operator input. We posit tha...

In this paper we explore automation bias in terms of joint decision making between humans and automation. In an experiment, participants made decisions, and indicated the reason for this decision, in a road traffic monitoring task with the aid of automation of varying reliability (i.e., 25% or 81%). Reliability level had a clear impact on the user’...

Self-assessment is widely used in open learner models (OLMs) as a metacognitive process to enhance students’ self-regulated learning. Yet little research has investigated the impact of the visualisation when the OLM shows the conflict (i.e., uncertainty) between the system’s beliefs about student knowledge and students’ confidence in the correctnes...

User preferences for indicating uncertainty using specific visual variables have been explored outside of educational reporting. Exploring students’ preferred method to indicate uncertainty in open learner models can provide hints about which approaches students will use, so further design approaches can be considered. Participants were 67 students...

Credit card fraud management is accomplished most of the times through an automated process. However, there are occasions when machines cannot evaluate the outcome of a given case with enough confidence, and therefore, human domain expertise must be used to settle those transactions. This demo paper presents the two dashboards developed for the Eur...

To prevent problems and capitalise on opportunities before they even occur, the research project SPEEDD proposed a methodology, and developed a prototype for proactive event-driven decisionmaking. We present the application of this methodology to credit card fraud management. The machine learning component of the SPEEDD prototype supports the onlin...

Background: Based on anecdotal and observational evidence, we hypothesized that the prevalence of cervical musculoskeletal disorder (C-MSD) would be high among plastic surgeons. A questionnaire review was undertaken to test this hypothesis. Ergonomic assessment was undertaken to assess causal factors of C-MSD. Method: An anonymous questionnaire...

The performance of complex polyrhythms—rhythms where the left and right hand move at different rates—is usually the province of highly trained individuals. However, studies in which hand movement is guided haptically show that even novices can perform polyrhythms with no or only brief training. In this study, we investigated whether novices are abl...

Data are included in the supporting file. (XLSX)

We explore the ways in which smart objects can be used to cue actions as part of coaching for Activities of Daily Living (ADL) following brain damage or injury, such as might arise following a stroke. In this case, appropriate actions are cued for a given context. The context is defined by the intention of the users, the state of the objects and th...

Road traffic control rooms rely on human operators to monitor and interact with information presented on multiple displays. Past studies have found inconsistent use of available visual information sources in such settings across different domains. In this study, we aimed to broaden the understanding of observer behaviour in control rooms by analysi...

The examination of a scene of crime provides both an interesting case study and analogy for consideration of Distributed Cognition . In this paper, Distribution is defined by the number of agents involved in the criminal justice process, and in terms of the relationship between a Crime Scene Examiner and the environment being searched.

The consistency and repeatability of movement patterns has been of long-standing interest in locomotor biomechanics, but less well explored in other domains. Tool use is one of such a domain; while the complex dynamics of the human-tool-environment system have been approached from various angles, to date it remains unknown how the rhythmicity of re...

Literature summary of common preferred movement frequencies. This short review presents a summary of commonly observed movement frequencies in locomotor tasks. (DOCX)

Cycling frequencies for various activities. Tabulated selection of published frequencies referred to in S1 Text at which humans perform various terrestrial activities such as walking, running, hopping, bouncing or other activities such as cycling, swimming and rowing. (DOCX)

Data used in this manuscript. (XLSX)

Traffic on freeways can be managed by means of ramp meters from Road Traffic Control rooms. Human operators cannot efficiently manage a network of ramp meters. To support them, we present an intelligent platform for traffic management which includes a new ramp metering coordination scheme in the decision making module, an efficient dashboard for in...

In this study, we propose a metric in order to quantify how closely a healthy participant imitates a robot, for which we use inertial sensors attached to both individual participant and to a humanoid-robot. For the experiment, twelve healthy participants were invited to perform simple arm movements in order to apply the state space reconstruction w...

Variability is an inherent feature of human movement, but little research has been done in order to measure such a characteristic using inertial sensors attached to person's body (wearable sensors). Therefore the aim of this preliminary study is to investigate the assessment of human movement variability for dance activities. We asked thirteen part...

The ways in which organizations make use of information available to them to make decisions and manage activity is an essential topic of investigation for human factors. When the information is uncertain, incomplete or subject to change, then decision making and activity management can become challenging. Under such circumstances, it has become com...

In this paper, we report the design of a simulated disaster management exercise that is used to explore the manner in which teams of emergency responders make sense of unfamiliar, dynamic situations. The paper develops a notion of sensemaking that combines semantic (i.e., extracting meaning from cues in the environment) and pragmatic (i.e., recogni...

We present a preliminary experiment to understand the variability of six simple movements. Six participants, wearing inertial measurement units on their wrist, performed six actions. The data collected were analysed using time-delay embedding theorem, PCA and percentage of cumulative energy to characterise variability in these movements. Of these m...

Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) has proved successful in supporting Human Factors analysis, providing a system-level view of operations that can be used to understand how systems achieve their missions. However, a critical gap exists in the transition from CWA to prototype design and implementation. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap between C...