Dr. Andrew Menching Liu

Dr. Liu is currently working on several projects relating to safety and human-interaction with automation in surface transportation. He is working with the Federal Railroad Administration to study the role and benefit of advanced displays (e.g., HUDs) in future locomotives with automation capabilities. In a recently finished collaboration with the FRA and General Electric Research Center (Niskayuna, NY), he investigated new locomotive automation concepts and their impact on the role and performance of locomotive engineers. Another FRA project designed and evaluated a prototype in-cab display to support locomotive engineer situation awareness and decision making. As part of these projects, he has helped the FRA develop the capabilities of their Cab Technology Integration Laboratory which simulates railroad operations in a realistic cab setting. In the automotive realm, he is currently working with colleagues at the Ford Motor Company and the Brigham and Women's Hospital (Boston, MA) to investigate new fatigue countermeasures to improve driver safety.

He also been a co-investigator in several human spaceflight research projects sponsored by NASA and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI)) that have focused on how perceptual and cognitive abilities factor into performance of real-world tasks. More specifically, the projects studied interaction with automated checklists, training and control of complex tasks such as space teleoperation, the effects of fatigue on complex task performance, human 3D spatial memory and navigation, and perception of the "up" direction in microgravity. He has developed a medium fidelity simulation of ISS space robotics operations with several generations of graduate students that has been the test bed for most of the recent projects. The open platform is now being used to research advanced concepts, such as automated checklists and new just-in-time training techniques.


(summary updated 8/2017)