Barrett Caldwell
"Panel discussion: "Being Martian" - STEW 206"
Fowler Hall: 10 - 11:30 PM
While long a popular place of wonder, there is now additional emphasis about spending time on Mars, if you’re a robot (Opportunity, Curiosity), a one-way ticket holder (Mars One), or an accidental resident (Mark Watney). (Statistically, it’s a good bet that Mark or one of his crew mates would have spent time in Indiana.) Whether you were fabricated in a clean room (robotics), or spent time as a baby (human exploration), your ability to thrive on Mars represents the integration of expertise and experience from a variety of scientific and engineering disciplines. How do you handle being on your own, or dealing with a bad day? This talk covers important concepts (and misconceptions) including analogs, autonomy, resilience, and “human error”. These issues are not just important for doing well on other planets. Examine the interaction between humans on a team during a Prolonged space exploration mission, and how this differs from the interaction between humans and AI on the same mission.
Bio: Barrett S. Caldwell is Professor of Industrial Engineering (and Aeronautics & Astronautics) at Purdue. He has a PhD (Univ. of California, Davis, 1990) is in Social Psychology and BS degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics and Humanities (MIT, 1985). Prof. Caldwell's research team, the Group Performance Environments Research (GROUPER) Laboratory, examines and improves how people get, share, and use information well. GROUPER research highlights human factors engineering approaches to information flow, task coordination, and team performance in settings ranging from healthcare to spaceflight to STEM education. He is Director of the NASA-funded Indiana Space Grant Consortium, promoting STEM education throughout Indiana.