The Cognitive Engineering Research Institute (CERI) is an independent, not-for-profit, research institute founded by partners from private industry, academia, and government laboratories.

Cognitive Engineering
Research Institute
5810 South Sossaman Rd.
Ste. 106
Mesa, AZ 85212 -5826

P: 480-988-7306
F: 480-988-3162

RESEARCH

Context of Research
CERI conducts research in the context of complex sociotechnical systems that involve intense cognitive work distributed among multiple team members, such as:

RPA (Remotely Piloted Aircraft) human system integration
UUV (Unmanned Underwater Vehicle) operations
Planning & Resource Allocation Tasks (Military, emergency response)
Extreme Environments
Medical/hospitals/healthcare
Emergency management
Homeland and Cyber Security

Core Competencies
CERI strives to increase competencies in the following (highly interrelated) areas:

Methods for understanding complex socio-technical systems

Cognitive Task Analysis
Experimentation in Synthetic Task Environments
Field Experimentation

Measurement of team performance, team process, and team cognition for monitoring, assessing, diagnosing, and predicting team activity

Real-time/task-embedded, intermittent, and post-processed
Content-free communications
Measures of team situation awareness
Coordination metrics
Application of dynamics to team measurement

Empirical understanding of various factors (task, environment, team, and individual) in complex socio-technical systems. For instance:

Training intervention
Team composition
Retention interval
Teamwork experience
Remote/distributed command and control operations
Cross training

Models of cognitive activity in socio-technical systems

Dynamical Systems Modeling of human/team performance
Intelligent agents as: decision aids, synthetic teammates, system evaluators, supervisors of complex tasks, and task/workload management

Theoretical development in complex socio-technical systems

Interactive Team Cognition
Team situation awareness
Team expertise/high performing teams

Guidance on applications in complex socio-technical systems

Declutter UAV displays
Intelligent agents

HUMAN FACTORS OF RPAs
The term “unmanned” is misleading when used in the context of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles also known as UASs – Unmanned Aerial Systems, RPAs – Remotely Piloted Aircraft ) as well as other remotely operated vehicles. UAV operations involve many people ranging from those in the UAV ground control station and Air Operations Center to those in nearby manned aircraft. Analogies of UAV operations to manned flight or air traffic control tasks misrepresent the nature of UAV operations. Trends toward reduced staffing of operations, increased number of vehicles to control, and integration with other air operations and combat functions are all associated with critical human factors issues. By hosting the Human Factors of UAVs Workshop, CERI has united the human factors research community with the UAV operational community to identify the critical human factors challenges associated with UAV operations. These workshops provide a venue for disseminating peer-reviewed research results in this growing area. CERI is also working with research partners to understand the cognitive challenges that teams of UAV operators face and to training and design interventions to improve team performance.

To locate publications related to this line of research, click here.

COMMUNICATION ANALYSIS
Team member interactions in the form of team communication are central to team cognition. Team communication is a rich source of data that can be obtained with little to no intrusion on team task performance. Although a rich source of information, team communication data can be cumbersome to transcribe and a drain on effort and resources when valid, reliable, and automated analytical tools are not available. Team communication analysis at CERI focuses on aspects of communication, such as flow (who is talking to whom and when), that are valid and reliable predictors of team performance. This line of research focuses on developing and refining communication flow metrics as well as identifying ways to map communication flow onto communication content in order to automate communication analysis. The outcome of CERI’s communication analysis research will support team collaboration and coordination by allowing trainers to monitor a team’s progress in real time and by alerting them when interventions are necessary.

To locate publications related to this line of research, click here.

COORDINATION AND SYNTHETIC TEAMMATES
Cognitive coordination is the timely and adaptive sharing of information. Command and control, particularly within the network-centric battle space, requires extensive coordination among a group of cognitive entities (humans and agents). The goal of the research is to better understand cognitive coordination and the impact of mode of communication, presence of synthetic teammates, and training regime on team performance and coordination. CERI’s efforts in this area have yielded empirical findings related to the acquisition and retention of team coordination skill in addition to metrics for assessing performance, coordination, situation awareness, and knowledge at the team level. The empirical findings and metrics are relevant to cognitive coordination on the network-centric battlefield as well as domains such as homeland security. These efforts have also generated data needed for AFRL’s PALM Lab to develop a synthetic teammate which will eventually replace the Air Vehicle Operator on teams.

To locate publications related to Team Coordination, click here.

To locate publications related to Synthetic Teammates, click here.