The Human Performance Seminar Series (836) from the Center for Ergonomics is open to all. U-M Industrial and Operations Engineering graduate students and faculty are especially encouraged to attend.

Title:
Back to the Future—The C4E Story

Abstract:
From 1960 to 2000, several major social and economic conditions in the US created the need and opportunity for multiple disciplines to combine in an effort to improve a variety of environments for people of all ages. This seminar will discuss how these conditions led faculty members from IOE, Environmental and Occupational Health, Statistics, Psychology, Pediatrics, Anthropology, and the Transportation Research Institute to collaborate and then form the Center for Ergonomics in 1980. Early problems addressed by these faculty members and their students led to methods and solutions related to improving: Apollo EVA/IVA tasks, Child Product Safety Requirements, OSHA Fall Protection Requirements, Occupational Weight Lifting Requirements, Aircraft Baggage Handling Limitations, Disney Resort Manual Activity Requirements, Automobile Egress and Ingress Designs, to name a few. More recently, the emphasis in workplace and product design has broadened and shifted from supporting primarily physical task requirements to addressing the perceptual and cognitive demands imposed by increasingly automated and (semi)autonomous technologies. The second part of this talk will highlight recent C4E research and accomplishments, and discuss future opportunities in the areas of human-machine teaming and human-robot interaction.