ATLAS Lab

About Us

The ATLAS Lab was founded in 2018 by Dr. Meredith Carroll to study and develop solutions to optimize human performance, cognition, and learning in aviation systems and beyond.  Through systematic and applied research methods, the ATLAS Lab studies how humans process information; effectively team with machine and human counterparts; develop knowledge, skills and expertise; and the human factors which influence these processes in a range of complex systems.

 The ATLAS Lab also evaluates current technology solutions to make recommendations for streamlining human performance and designs unique training and education tools grounded in human factors, and cognition and learning theory.  The ATLAS Lab conducts research in a range of domains both within and outside of aviation, including commercial, military and general aviation; unmanned aircraft systems (UAS); urban/advanced air mobility (U/AAM), aviation maintenance; air traffic control; a range of military operations; and complex systems, in general.

Current Focus Areas:

Human-Autonomy Teaming.  Research projects include investigating the development and maintenance of human trust in autonomous agent teams, including the impact of trust violations and repair strategies in a multi-agent HAT,  how trust spills over between multiple agent teammates, and how trust can be captured with real-time and unobtrusive measures.  Research has also included designing and evaluating ground control station design concepts to allow an operator to manage multiple autonomous aircraft in an Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) concept of operations.

Urban/Advanced Air Mobility.  Research projects include a multidisciplanary NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI) investigating trust in learning-enabled autonomous safety assurance systems for AAM and developing methods and tools that can be used in certification.  Research is also examining pilot interfaces and training implications for the next generation of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to support air taxi and air cargo operations.  Current research is focused on evaluating prototype display designs for eVTOL battery information displays, exploring the use of virtual reality technology to enhance pilot training, and examining the impact of levels of automation (e.g., human pilot monitoring and making decisions vs. totally autonomous vehicle) on operator situation awareness and decision making for future eVTOL operations.

Learning and Expertise Development.  Research projects include examining cognitive, behavoral and physiological indicators of pilot expertise to identify measures that can be used in simulator training to understand where a learner is on the expertise continuum and tailor training.  Current research is also investigating the training effectiveness of adaptive training strategies that adapt flight simulator scenario difficulty based on performance and/or mental effort.  Research has also examined instructional strategies to engage and educate under represented minorities (women and minorities) in the field of cybersecurity, including development, implementation, and empirical evaluation of a training curriculum for local high schools.  

Cognition and Decision Making.  Research efforts have examined pilot decision making in complex dynamic systems, including the impacts of stress and  uncertainty, such as when conflicting information is encountered on the flight deck.  This research developed a theoretical model of pilot decision making with conflicting information, including how pilot trust and contextual risk factors influence decision making.

Human Performance and Individual Difference.  Research across the above research areas typically also includes the study of how individual difference factors come into play.  For example, how do factors such as an individual's propensity to trust impact trust dynamics, or how do a learners stress-coping strategies impact adaptive training strategy effectiveness? Research has also examined the impact of various individual difference factors such as personality type, motivation, cognitive ability, and resilience to stress on human  performance and learning.