Andrew L. Kun

In driving simulator studies participants complete both visual and aural task. The most obvious visual task is driving itself, but there are others such as viewing an LCD screen that displays a map. Aural tasks include talking to an in-vehicle computer. I am very interested in estimating the cognitive load of these various tasks. One way to estimate this cognitive load is through changes in pupil diameter: in an effect called the Task Evoked Pupillary Response (TEPR) [1], the pupil dilates with increased cognitive load.

However, in driving simulator studies participants scan a non-uniformly illuminated visual scene. If unaccounted for, this non-uniformity in illumination might introduce an error in our estimate of the TEPR. Oskar Palinko and I will have a paper at ETRA 2012 [2] extending our previous work [3], in which we established that it is possible to separate the pupil’s light reflex from the TEPR. While in our previous work TEPR was the result of participants’ engagement in an aural task, in our latest experiment TEPR is due to engagement in a visual task.

The two experiments taken together support our main hypothesis that it is possible to disambiguate (and not just separate) the two effects even in complicated environments, such as a driving simulator. We are currently designing further experiments to test this hypothesis.

References

[1] Jackson Beatty, “Task-Evoked Pupillary Responses, Processing Load, and the Structure of Processing Resources,” Psychological Bulletin, 276-292, 91(2)

[2] Oskar Palinko, Andrew L. Kun, “Exploring the Effects of Visual Cognitive Load and Illumination on Pupil Diameter in Driving Simulators,” to appear at ETRA 2012

[3] Oskar Palinko, Andrew L. Kun, “Exploring the Influence of Light and Cognitive Load on Pupil Diameter in Driving Simulator Studies,” Driving Assessment 2011

When I think back to the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the images that come to mind are of wildlife affected on beaches, idle fishing vessels, and a massive response that involved thousands of people across multiple states.

How can such a massive response be managed? There is no single answer. However, one thing that can help is to make data about various aspects of the disaster, as well as the response effort, accessible to those conducting the response activities. This is the role of the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA). ERMA is a web-based data visualization application. It visualizes geo-coded time series, without requiring users to know how to access specialized databases, or overlay data from these databases on virtual maps. ERMA was developed at UNH, under the guidance of the Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC).

Nancy Kinner is the co-director of the UNH Coastal Response Research Center. Building on Nancy’s experiences with ERMA, she and I are interested in exploring how a multi-touch table could be used to access and manipulate geo-coded time series.

Seeking UNH CS student

To further are effort, we are seeking a UNH CS student interested in developing a user interface on a multi-touch table. The interface would allow a human operator to access remote databases, manipulate the data (e.g. by sending it to Matlab for processing) and display the results on a virtual map or a graph. This work will be part of a team effort with two students working with Nancy on identifying data and manipulations of interest.

What should the user interface do?

The operator should be able to select data, e.g. from a website such as ERMA. Data types of interest include outputs from various sensors (temperature, pressure, accelerometers, etc.). Data manipulation will require some simple processing, such as setting beginning and end points for sensor readings. It will also require more complex processing of data, e.g. filtering.

What platform will be used?

The project will leverage Project54′s Microsoft Surface multi-touch table. Here is a video by UNH ECE graduate student Tim April introducing some of the interactions he has explored with the Surface.

What are the terms of this job?

We are interested in hiring an undergraduate or graduate UNH CS student for the 2011-2012 academic year, with the possibility of extending the appointment for the summer of 2012 and beyond, pending satisfactory performance and the availability of funding. The student will work up to 20 hours/week during the academic year and up to 40 hours a week during the summer break.

What are the required skills? And what new skills will I acquire?

Work on this ream-project will require object-oriented programming that is necessary to control the multi-touch table. You will explore the application of these skills to the design of surface user interfaces as well as experiments with human subjects – after all we will have to systematically test your creation! Finally, you will interact with students and faculty from at least two other disciplines (civil/environmental and electrical/computer engineering), which means you will gain valuable experience working on multi-disciplinary teams.

Interested? Have questions, ideas, suggestions?
Email me.

This Tuesday I organized an information session for UNH ECE students interested in participating in the Budapest Exchange Program. Under the program UNH CEPS students can spend a semester at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE) during their junior year. The program also brings BUTE students to UNH for a semester.

Under the exchange program five UNH ECE students spent the spring 2011 semester in Budapest. All five (picture above) were present at the information session to share their experiences with the eight juniors interested in the program (picture below).

The experiences we heard about were awesome, in fact life-changing. All five alumni of the exchange program agreed that spending a semester in Budapest was an excellent decision, with some calling it their “best decision.” The program was challenging, but that was one of its most important aspects because of the skills and confidence it built in each and every one of them. They all enjoyed their classes at BUTE, with one student describing a BUTE professor as the “best professor” he’s ever had – enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and helpful. For more on studying in Budapest, read the eceblogger posts by Carol Perkins, one of the five alumni of the program.

The juniors received instructions on administrative steps to take in order to participate in the program. These instructions were assembled by Kathy Reynolds and Caitlin Baldwin – thanks Kathy and Caitlin! Also thanks to József Porohnavec, a BUTE student spending a semester at UNH, for participating in the session.

As Kathy said in a follow-up email to the eight juniors: we can’t wait to hear their stories next fall when it is their turn to meet with the next group of students going to Budapest.

For the second year in a row the UNH ECE department has been selected by World Learning (WL) as a host institution for international exchange students participating in WL programs. WL is a non-profit organization that, according to its website, “provides education, exchange, and development programs that cultivate the global leadership and social innovation needed in a shrinking world.”

During the 2010-2011 academic year we hosted Angelica Sanabria from Honduras. Angelica participated in the WL UGRAD program. The picture to the left shows Angelica with her UGRAD Post image – UGRAD students use this image as a way to report on their travels around the US. Exploring the US, including by travel, is an integral part of the exchange program. During her time at UNH Angelica impressed me greatly as a smart and capable person. You can read more about her experiences at UNH on eceblogger.

During the 2011-2012 academic year, UNH ECE is hosting two students, smiling in the picture to the left. Huy Dong (left) has completed his freshman year at Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City. Ivan Razumenic is a senior at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. Btw, Ivan is a blogger – take a look at his view of the WL FORECAST program and life in general on his blog.

I’m thrilled that WL has selected UNH as a host institution, and I’m really looking forward to working with both of our exchange students in the coming months. I am also greatful to the UNH CEPS Dean’s Office for their support in bringing in the exchange students.

I’m thrilled to announce the 2011 Cognitive Load and In-Vehicle Human-Machine Interaction workshop (CLW 2011) to be held at AutomotiveUI 2011 in Salzburg, Austria. I’m co-organizing the workshop with Peter Heeman, Tim Paek, Tom Miller, Paul Green, Ivan Tashev, Peter Froehlich, Bryan Reimer, Shamsi Iqbal and Dagmar Kern. 

Why have this workshop? Interactions with in-vehicle electronic devices can interfere with the primary task of driving. The concept of cognitive load helps us understand the extent to which these interactions interfere with the driving task and how this interference can be mitigated. While research results on in-vehicle cognitive load are frequently presented at automotive research conferences and in related journals, so far no dedicated forum is available for focused discussions on this topic. This workshop aims to fill that void.

Submissions to the workshop are due October 17. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Cognitive load estimation in the laboratory,
- Cognitive load estimation on the road,
- Sensing technologies for cognitive load estimation,
- Algorithms for cognitive load estimation,
- Performance measures of cognitive load,
- Physiological measures of cognitive load,
- Visual measures of cognitive load,
- Subjective measures of cognitive load,
- Methods for benchmarking cognitive load,
- Cognitive load of driving,
- Cognitive overload and cognitive underload,
- Approaches to cognitive load management inspired by human-human interactions.

For a detailed description of workshop goals take a look at the call for papers.

Personal navigation devices (PNDs) are ubiquitous and primarily come in three forms: as built-in devices in vehicles, as brought-in stand-alone devices, or as applications on smart phones.

So what is next for PNDs? In a driving simulator study to be presented at MobileHCI 2011 [1], Zeljko Medenica, Tim Paek, Oskar Palinko and I explored two ideas:

• Augmented reality PND: An augmented reality PND overlays route guidance on the real world using a head-up display. Our version is simulated and we simply project the route guidance on the simulator screens along with the driving simulation images. Augmented reality PNDs are not yet available commercially for cars.
• Street-view PND: This PND uses a simplified version of augmented reality. It overlays route guidance on a sequence of still images of the road. The images and overlay are displayed on a head-down display. Google Maps Navigation runs on smart phones and can be used with street view.

The following video demonstrates the two PNDs.

Our findings indicate that augmented reality PNDs allow for excellent visual attention to the road ahead and excellent driving performance. In contrast, street-view PNDs can have a detrimental effect on both. Thus, while further research is clearly needed, it might be best if navigation with a street view PND was handled by a passenger and not by the driver.

References

[1] Zeljko Medenica, Andrew L. Kun, Tim Paek, Oskar Palinko, “Augmented Reality vs. Street Views: A Driving Simulator Study Comparing Two Emerging Navigation Aids,” to appear at MobileHCI 2011

Light intensity affects pupil diameter: the pupil contracts in bright environments and it dilates in the dark. Interestingly, cognitive load also affects pupil diameter, with the pupil dilating in response to increased cognitive load. This effect is called the task evoked pupillary response (TEPR) [1]. Thus, changes in pupil diameter are physiological measures of cognitive load; however changes in lighting introduce noise into the estimate.

Last week Oskar Palinko gave a talk at Driving Assessment 2011 introducing our work on disambiguating the effects of cognitive load and light on pupil diameter in driving simulator studies [2]. We hypothesized that we can simply subtract the effect of lighting on pupil diameter from the combined effect of light and cognitive load and produce an estimate of cognitive load only. We tested the hypothesis through an experiment in which participants were given three tasks:

• Cognitive task with varying cognitive load and constant lighting. This task was adapted from the work of Klingner et al. [3]. Participants listened to a voice counting from 1 to 18 repeatedly. Participants were told that every sixth number (6, 12, and 18) might be out of order and were instructed to push a button if they detected an out-of-order number. This task induced increased cognitive load at every sixth number as participants focused on the counting sequence. A new number was read every 1.5 seconds, thus cognitive load (and pupil diameter) increased every 6 x 1.5 sec = 9 seconds.
• Visual task with constant cognitive load (assuming no daydreaming!) and varying lighting. Participants were instructed to follow a visual target which switched location between a white, a gray and a black truck. The light reaching the participant’s eye varied as the participant’s gaze moved from one truck to another. Participants held their gaze on a truck for 9 seconds, allowing the pupil diameter ample time to settle.
• Combined task with varying cognitive load and lighting. Participants completed the cognitive and visual tasks in parallel. We synchronized the cognitive and visual tasks such that increases in cognitive load occurred after the pupil diameter stabilized in response to moving the gaze between trucks. Synchronization was straightforward as the cognitive task was periodic with 9 seconds and in the visual task lighting intensity also changed every 9 seconds.

Our results confirm that, at least in this simple case, our hypothesis holds and we can indeed detect changes in cognitive load under varying lighting conditions. We are planning to extend this work by introducing scenarios in which participants drive in realistic simulated environments. Under such scenarios gaze angles, and thus the amount of light reaching participants’ eyes, will change rapidly, making the disambiguation more complex, and of course more useful.

References

[1] Jackson Beatty, “Task-Evoked Pupillary Responses, Processing Load, and the Structure of Processing Resources,” Psychological Bulletin, 276-292, 91(2)

[2] Oskar Palinko, Andrew L. Kun, “Exploring the Influence of Light and Cognitive Load on Pupil Diameter in Driving Simulator Studies,” Driving Assessment 2011

[3] Jeff Klingner, Rashit Kumar, Pat Hanrahan, “Measuring the Task-Evoked Pupillary Response with a Remote Eye Tracker,” ETRA 2008

Last week my PhD student Zeljko Medenica advanced to candidacy. Zeljko plans to create a driving performance measure that would be sensitive to short-lived and/or infrequent degradations in driving performance. In previous driving simulator-based studies [1, 2] we found that glancing away from the road is correlated with worse driving performance. Importantly, this is true even when performance averages over the length of the entire experiment are not affected. Thus, Zeljko plans to explore the use of cross-correlation in creating a new, highly sensitive driving performance measure.

Zeljko’s PhD committee includes Paul Green (UMTRI), Tim Paek (Microsoft Research), Nicholas Kirsch (UNH) and Tom Miller (UNH). Thanks to all for serving!

References

[1] Andrew L. Kun, Tim Paek, Zeljko Medenica, Nemanja Memarovic, Oskar Palinko, “Glancing at Personal Navigation Devices Can Affect Driving: Experimental Results and Design Implications,” Automotive UI 2009

[2] Zeljko Medenica, Andrew L. Kun, Tim Paek, Oskar Palinko, “Augmented Reality vs. Street Views: A Driving Simulator Study Comparing Two Emerging Navigation Aids,” to appear at MobileHCI 2011

Yesterday I participated in the work of the 2011 Emergency Responders Workshop (pdf) organized by WisDOT, CVTA and GLTEI. The workshop had two major goals. One was to provide a sampling of state-of-the-art technologies used by emergency responders. The other was to begin charting a path toward developing advanced technologies. Participants from emergency responder agencies, industry and academia discussed their vision for future technologies as well as barriers to progress.

My presentation focused on pervasive (or ubiquitous) computing for law enforcement. I encouraged participants to ask the following question:

“What should be the focus of R&D efforts targeting percom technologies for emergency responders?”

CVTA President Scott McCormick (in picture below) and WisDOT’s John Corbin led the meeting superbly – thanks to both for including me in this effort.

For more pictures from the event visit Flickr.

I am seeking UNH CS students (individuals or teams) interested in developing a user interface on a multi-touch table. The interface would allow a human operator to control a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This project will part of a collaborative effort with WPI on creating a fleet of UAVs. Students at WPI will focus on building the UAVs. Students at UNH will work on communication issues (with Professor Nicholas Kirsch) and on user interface issues (with me).

What should the user interface do?

The operator should be able to view and manipulate data sent out by the UAV fleet. Data types of interest include images, video, sounds and outputs from various sensors (temperature, pressure, accelerometers, etc.). Data manipulation will require some simple processing, such as setting beginning and end points for sounds, zooming images, etc. It will also require more complex processing of data, e.g. filtering.

What are the data sources?

Eventually, the data will come from UAVs. However, as a first step, data will be generated through games, similarly to work done by Jatin Matani and Trupti Telang. Thus, we might utilize cell phones to get images, webcams to get video, and Arduino boards to generate sensor data (e.g. temperature).

What platform will be used?

The project will leverage Project54′s Microsoft Surface multi-touch table. Here is a video by UNH ECE graduate student Tim April introducing some of the interactions he has explored with the Surface.

Is this a job, a project, or something else?

CS students would be able to use this effort as a senior project (details to be worked out with appropriate CS faculty). An independent study might also be a possiblity. Finally, I am interested in hiring students for academic year and/or summer jobs.

Can CS and ECE students collaborate?

Collaboration is not a requirement. However, some aspects of this work might benefit from the involvement of one or more UNH ECE students. E.g. ECE students can work on some of the data processing aspects of the projects, as well as on creating data sources (e.g. deployment of wireless sensor networks). I am actively recruiting ECE students for multi-touch projects and you are welcome to talk to your friends in ECE.

What are the required skills? And what new skills will I acquire?

For CS students, work on this project will require object-oriented programming that is necessary to control the multi-touch table. You will explore the application of these skills to the design of surface user interfaces as well as experiments with human subjects – after all we will have to systematically test your creation!

Interested? Have questions, ideas, suggestions?
Email me.