Daytona Beach Campus - College of Arts & Sciences

Department of Human Factors and Systems

Ongoing Research

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Research Facilities

The Department of Human Factors and Systems is committed to the on-going development and expansion of its research programs. Current research efforts are funded by federal and state agencies, industry, and private foundations. These efforts are dedicated to improving the safety and efficiency of aviation at the state, national and international levels.

The University's combination of flight experienced faculty and students, in combination with extensive simulator capabilities, creates one of the world's best human factors research testbeds. Accordingly, the University has stimulated efforts to build a major human factors research capability.

The University's dedicated, aviation-oriented faculty and student body, laboratories, simulators, and flight facilities provide the basic ingredients for supporting the on-going development and expansion of human factors research. This program has been designed to supportthe FAA objective of using human factors research to improve safety and efficiency throughout the National AirSpace system.

Current and future research plans include projects focused on human-centered automation, applications of virtual reality, assessing the human role in causing and avoiding accidents, development of better methods of assessing quality of human performance in aviation/aerospace systems, development of improved flight crew/controller communications and systems support capabilities, the development of cost-effectiveness evaluation of techniques for selection and training aviation administrative, operations, flight and maintenance personnel, and the development of standards and procedures for the validation and certification of human engineering design criteria.

The Department of Human Factors and Systems has a cadre of human factors specialists, a wide variety of training facilities capable of supporting research program objectives, and a master plan to guide the orderly development of the research programs and facilities.

The facilities include:

Fleet of aircraft and pilots with all levels of skill
Networked air traffic control simulator
Realtime Meteorological Laboratory
Human Computer Interaction Lab
System Engineering Lab
Human Cognition Center