Keynote Speakers
Prof. Paul Milgram, Ph.D., P.Eng.
ETC-Lab: Ergonomics in Teleoperation and Control Laboratory
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
University of Toronto
http://etclab.mie.utoronto.ca/people/Paul.html
The Importance of Reference Frames for Characterising Navigation in Information Spaces
Abstract
One of the interesting consequences of the escalating power of information technology, concomitant with its ever increasing permeation of our environment, is the frequent blurring of the distinction between the controller and the controlled. In contrast to the traditional model of users issuing commands to machines and acting upon the responses, differentiating between inputs and outputs can often be quite confusing. This has become especially true with the advent of mixed reality display technologies, which have enabled a vast new range of real and virtual world display-control interactions. In the talk a number of examples will be presented for which conventional frame of reference definitions can be inadequate for characterising the interaction metaphors intended for users of those systems. The case will then be made for the need for a comprehensive framework for modelling the diversity of couplings for a wide variety of display-control interactions.
Biosketch
Paul Milgram is a professor in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Toronto (UofT), where he specialises in Human Factors Engineering. He is also cross-appointed to the UofT Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering. When he is not teaching courses in engineering psychology, research methods in human factors, and calculus(!), Milgram’s research relates to display, control and navigation issues in 3D (mixed reality) environments. His work also focuses on human factors issues related to health care in general and medical devices in particular. His recent research builds upon his long-term work with (stereoscopic) augmented reality to apply digital imaging processing for enhancing operator displays. Application domains for his research have included surgery, anaesthesiology, telerobotics, navigation, air traffic control and automobile driving.
Before joining the UofT (in 1986), Paul Milgram worked as a senior human factors engineer at the National Aerospace Laboratory in Amsterdam. His research leaves outside of Canada have included ATR in Kyoto, Japan; the Centre d'Etudes de la Navigation Aérienne (CENA) in Toulouse, France; the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain; the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, Italy; and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, in Chennai, India. During the present 2017-18 academic year, he is serving as a Visiting Professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department of the International University – Vietnam National Universities in Ho Chi Minh City.
