Our Mission
Our mission is to pursue basic and applied research in measurement, understanding (through development of models and the conduct of validation experiments), and enhancement of human performance.
This broad mission impacts work in fields ranging from human factors in the aerospace industry to medical rehabilitation,occupational medicine, gerontology, and sports medicine. In recent years, the scope of our research and affiliations has expanded naturally to encompass virtual reality and human-operator problems, cybernetics, training, and topics in automation and robotics.
Generally speaking, "human performance" pertains to a human system (or the combination of a human system and one or more artificial systems) attempting to accomplish a task. Viewed in these terms, human performance is pervasive. Most of HPI's research results are intended to be applicable in any circumstance involving humans and tasks.
Our mission is to pursue basic and applied research in measurement, understanding (through development of models and the conduct of validation experiments), and enhancement of human performance.
This broad mission impacts work in fields ranging from human factors in the aerospace industry to medical rehabilitation,occupational medicine, gerontology, and sports medicine. In recent years, the scope of our research and affiliations has expanded naturally to encompass virtual reality and human-operator problems, cybernetics, training, and topics in automation and robotics.
Generally speaking, "human performance" pertains to a human system (or the combination of a human system and one or more artificial systems) attempting to accomplish a task. Viewed in these terms, human performance is pervasive. Most of HPI's research results are intended to be applicable in any circumstance involving humans and tasks.
Long-term Research Should Provide the Capability to Answer
Questions of the Following Type..
- How does one determine when it is unsafe for an individual with an injury or disease to drive an automobile (in selected contexts)?
- How does one determine the effectiveness of a new drug or other therapy for Parkinson's Disease (or any other neurologic disease that impairs performance)?
- • How should a device be optimally designed to help a person with a disability to communicate?
- How does one determine when (or if) a worker can return to his/her job after an injury?
- How should an important task be designed to insure that an astronaut executing an extravehicular activity can safely and successfully accomplish it?
- Which human subsystems - and which aspect(s) of performance associated with them -should an athlete (or musician or surgeon) strive to improve in order to maximize utilization of time available for training and level of performance in their sport (or other skilled activity)?
Measurement
"Measurement" has been the key to scientific progress in many fields. We define measurement here to include measurement of performance and capacity for performance, as well as any ancillary attributes necessary to understand performance (such as attributes of structure). Furthermore,while there is often debate regarding "the right" level to measure, we understand measurement to be valuable at different hierarchical levels (e.g., the "elbow flexor" subsystem vs. measuring how well a person can drive - or the "driving system").
Enhancement
Finally, the term "enhancement" means improvement of performance relative to some initial reference point. There is much good work regarding what it takes to enhance human performance in certain areas. However, in fields such as rehabilitation, sports, and music there remains a considerable need to know how to efficiently enhance performance.
Modeling
"Modeling" is viewed to be synonymous with "understanding". We seek the ability to relate measurements made at one hierarchical level to another level within the human system. Reliable models provide the ability to explain and to predict. We envision, for example, models that tell us how much of a given performance capacity (e.g., strength, movement speed, visual information processing speed, positioning accuracy, etc. - of selected subsystems) is "required" to achieve a given level of performance in some high level task of interest (e.g., playing the cello, operating a robot, working as an engineer, etc.). Prior to some of our theoretical developments, it was not possible to state this vision clearly. The development of all such models is beyond the scope of a single institution. Based on our findings, however, we believe that it is feasible to create and demonstrate a methodology for the development of such models and to demonstrate their utility. In doing so, we hope to lead others to take on model development for specific applications.
Measurements give insight into models and then provide the means for developing and implementing models. Models lead to new understanding and this new understanding will, in turn, no doubt lead to better methods for enhancing performance.
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