Our focus is on understanding and improving the interaction between humans and technology. We study how people interact with different types of technologies, often from perspectives such as situated, distributed, and embodied cognition. The goal is to generate knowledge that can contribute to safer, more usable, and more effective sociotechnical systems in complex environments.
Our research areas include:
- Social robotics, where we examine how people interact socially with autonomous agents and technologies, ranging from humanoid and animal-like robots to virtual agents and automated vehicles.
- Human Factors, with a focus on how humans and systems function in complex environments. The work addresses issues related to teamwork, stress, communication, patient safety, resilience, workload, simulation, and usability evaluation. Research is conducted within domains such as military command and control, healthcare, nuclear power, traffic, and aviation. Within transportation we study, for example, human interaction in remote operation of automated vehicles, interaction with autonomous shuttles, and driver analysis for trains.
We use a broad methodological toolbox ranging from qualitative methods such as observations and interviews to quantitative surveys and performance measures. We conduct both field studies and controlled experiments as well as simulations.
We participate in several national and international research collaborations and have strong ties to research institutes such as:
- VTI (The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute)
- KMC (Centre for Disaster Medicine and Trauma)
- FOI (The Swedish Defence Research Agency)
- RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
Our teaching portfolio includes courses and thesis supervision in cognitive science, human–computer interaction, and related areas at undergraduate, advanced, and doctoral levels.
The unit is led by Tom Ziemke, Professor.