Workshop: Collaborative Research: NSF/M3X Visioning Workshop on Formalization of Human Factors into Computational Models; New York, New York; September 2025

This grant supports a workshop on the formalization of human factors into computational models. The workshop will convene 40 participants with expertise in human factors, behavioral economics, cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, human-centered design, control theory, robotics, formal methods, and autonomous systems. Through presentations and discussions, participants will articulate the state-of-the-art capabilities in these fields while identifying research gaps and challenges related to the development and implementation of theoretical and computational models of human factors.

An interdisciplinary approach that facilitates a common language and objectives across disciplines is key to this endeavor. The results of this workshop will advance the fields of robotics, dynamics, and controls by identifying advanced capabilities and technologies that could arise from the use of models that methodologically capture non-trivial human behaviors.

The results of this workshop will help advance the science of autonomous systems and could broadly impact research directions and capabilities in robotics and control. After the workshop, a report will be generated to summarize the findings, which will be shared with the general research community.

Despite extensive work in the development of autonomous dynamical systems, system capabilities are fundamentally limited by the challenges associated with effective, accurate, and computationally tractable models of human factors. To move the field beyond simplistic assumptions of human behavior that limit system capabilities, new approaches are needed to more faithfully capture the complexities humans bring to autonomous systems.

The activities of this workshop are designed to bring together systems and controls researchers who share the challenge of translating important concepts from behavioral economics, social psychology, human factors, and human-centered design into frameworks amenable to computation and control of dynamical systems. Workshop activities will help participants develop and employ a common language that facilitates a meaningful exchange of ideas across disciplines to articulate better a roadmap for addressing research gaps and challenges that exist in formalizing human factors into computational models. Identifying these challenges is essential for advancing the field of systems and control.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.