We address the limited automatic scanning functionality of standard PTZ camera systems. We present an adaptive, scene-specific model using standard PTZ camera hardware. The adaptive model is constructed automatically by detecting human activity in motion history images (MHIs) using an iterative candidacy-classification-reduction process. The target motion is quantified and employed in the construction of a global activity map, which in turn is used to direct or navigate the camera

Robotic systems represent new capabilities that justifiably excite technologists and problem holders in many areas. But what affordances do the new capabilities represent and how will problem holders and practitioners exploit these capabilities as they struggle to meet performance demands and resource pressures? Discussions of the impact of new robotic technology typically mistake new capabilities for affordances in use. The dominate note is that robots as autonomous agents will revolutionize human activity. This is a fundamental oversimplification (see Feltovich et al., 2001) as past research has shown that advances in autonomy (an intrinsic capability) have turned out to demand advances in support for coordinated activity (extrinsic affordances). The Law of Stretched Systems captures the co-adaptive dynamic that human leaders under pressure for higher and more efficient levels of performance will exploit new capabilities to demand more complex forms of work (Woods and Dekker, 2000; Woods and Hollnagel, 2006). This law provides a guide to use past findings on the reverberations of technology change to project how effective leaders and operators will exploit the capabilities of future robotic systems. When one applies the Law of Stretched Systems to new robotic capabilities for demanding work settings, one begins to see new stories about how problem holders work with and through robotic systems to accomplish goals. These are not stories about machine autonomy and the substitution myth. Rather, the new capabilities trigger the exploration of new story lines about future operations that concern:

Communication was the most frequently cited cause of medication errors reported between 1995 and 2003. More detailed models of how communication breakdowns contribute to adverse events are needed to intervene to improve communication processes. We describe in detail an incident where an oncology fellow physician erroneously substituted the medication navelbine for the intended etoposide during ordering, resulting in a prolonged hospitalization with severe leukopenia for the patient. A team of human factors and medical experts analyzed the case and identified communication patterns described in the human factors literature. We discuss how the findings suggest targeted ideas for improving communication processes, media, and systems that may have higher "traction" for improving patient safety than are possible solely from aggregated analyses of coded descriptions of large sets of cases.

Developers of autonomous capabilities underestimate the need for coordination with human team members when their automata are deployed into complex operational settings. Automata are brittle as literal minded agents and there is a basic asymmetry in coordinative competencies between people and automata. The new capabilities of robotic systems raise new questions about how to support coordination. This paper presents a series of issues that demand innovation to achieve human-robot coordination (HRC). These include supporting people in their roles as problem holder and as robotic handler, overcoming ambiguities in remote perception, avoiding coordination surprises by better tools to see into future robotic activities and contingencies, and responsibility in human-robot teams.

This article provides a cognitive analysis of how people navigate in the computer medium. As the complexity of computerized information systems increases, interface designers face the formidable challenge of supporting navigation within these systems to allow users to quickly obtain relevant information. Instead of focusing on the comparison of a small subset of proposed techniques for aiding navigation, this study investigates how people handle navigation within the natural context of a familiar computer environment and reveals cognitive processes that can be better supported to aid navigation. The results of a field study and a field experiment converge to support previous navigation-related theories and contribute to a pattern of navigation behavior that has been noticed in domains like anesthesiology and nuclear power. This article describes the characteristics of the computer medium that influence people's ability to navigate, discusses typical navigation problems that arise in this medium, and describes how designers can aid navigation, based on an analysis of how computer users change their behavior and adapt to computer systems to overcome navigation-related problems.

In domains like air traffic management, aircraft carrier operations, and space mission control, practitioners coordinate their activities through voice loops that allow communication among groups of people who are spatially separate. Voice loops have evolved into essential coordination support tools for experienced practitioners in space shuttle mission control, as well as other domains. We describe how voice loops support the coordination of activities and cognitive processes in event-driven domains like space shuttle mission control. We discuss how the loops help flight controllers synchronize their activities and integrate information, and how they facilitate directed communication and support the negotiation of interruptions. In addition, we suggest factors like attentional cues, implicit protocols, and the structure and features of the loops, which might govern the success of voice loops in the mission control domain. Our results should provide insight into the important functions that should be considered in the development of systems intended to support cooperative work.

An alternative to the traditional human-factors guideline document is described. This new concept for organizing principles for human-computer interaction (HCI) was developed in response to four deficiencies in existing guidelines: (a) incorrect conceptualization of the units of display design, (b) inadequate integration of principles into process, (c) unrealistic view of the design process, and (d) inadequate communication of content issues. The authors describe the new heterarchical concept for organizing HCI guidance, including examples of how it would be used during the design process and examples of the kind of HCI guidance that appears within it. Under this approach, the basic units are theme-based modules; the organization is based on levels of display system design; and format illustrations are set up as models to be emulated.>

Automated factories, the flightdecks of commercial aircraft, and the control rooms of power plants are examples of decision-making environments in which a human operator performs an alerted-monitor role. These human-machine systems include automated monitor or alerting subsystems operating in support of a human monitor. The automated monitor subsystem makes preprogrammed decisions about the state of the underlying process based on current inputs and expectations about normal/abnormal operating conditions. When alerted by the automated monitor subsystem, the human monitor may analyze input data, confirm or disconfirm the decision made by the automated monitor, and take appropriate further action. In this paper, the combined automated monitor-human monitor system is modeled as a signal detection system in which the human operator and the automated component monitor partially correlated noisy channels. The signal detection analysis shows that overall system performance is highly sensitive to the interaction between the human's monitoring strategy and the decision parameter, Ca, of the automated monitor subsystem. Usual design practice is to set Ca to a value that optimizes the automated monitor's detection and false alarm rates. Our analysis shows that this setting will not yield optimal performance for the overall human-machine system. Furthermore, overall system performance may be limited to a narrow range of realizable detection and error rates. As a result, large gains in system performance can be achieved by manipulating the parameters of the automated monitor subsystem in light of the workload characteristics of the human operator.