A child who runs through a swinging door does something in common with a bird that lands on a tree branch. Both cases produce soft collisions rather than avoiding contact altogether. Soft survivable collisions can also be made in circumstances that change dramatically in the attempt, consider the circumstances of a Navy pilot landing on the bucking surface of a carrier deck. To understand how people and animals succeed in their capacity for soft collisions, scientists must account for soft collisions in all these situations. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Brett Fajen's research aims at understanding how people adapt to a wide range of conditions to successfully accomplish soft collisions or simply avoid collisions with obstacles in the path of motion. The research will be conducted using a simulator in which Dr. Fajen can systematically vary the task, environmental, and dynamic constraints, and observe how people adapt to such changes. The broader impacts of this project include applications to transportation safety, the design of mobile robots, teleoperation of vehicles from remote locations, and a deeper understanding of visual-motor deficits in humans. This project integrates research and education by supporting the development of two new courses at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and providing opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to participate in research
