Section: Research Program

Leveraging human control skills

Our group has developed a unique and recognized expertise in transfer functions, i.e. the algorithmic transformations of raw user input for system use. Transfer functions define how user actions are taken into account by the system. They can make a task easier or impossible and thus largely condition user performance, no matter the criteria (speed, accuracy, comfort, fatigue, etc). Ideally, the transfer function should be chosen or tuned to match the interaction context. Yet the question of how to design a function to maximize one or more criteria in a given context remains an open one, and on-demand adaptation is difficult because functions are usually implemented at the lowest possible level to avoid latency problems. Latency management and transfer function design are two problems that require cross examination to improve human performance with interactive systems. Both also contribute to the senses of initiation and control, two crucial component of the sense of agency  [44]. Our ultimate goal on these topics is to adapt the transfer function to the user and task in order to support stable and appropriate control. To achieve this, we investigate combinations of low-level (embedded) and high-level (application) ways to take user capabilities and task characteristics into account and reduce or compensate for latency in different contexts, e.g. using a mouse or a touchpad, a touch-screen, an optical finger navigation device or a brain-computer interface.