Kaber wins NSF award

A Mississippi State industrial engineer is earning a 1998 Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation.

Dr. David Kaber, whose research involves technology to expand the concept of virtual reality, received the $465,000 award to support a four-year investigation of telepresence-the sense of being present at a remote site.

According to Kaber, telepresence has been identified as a method to make teleoperators, as operators of remote-controlled robots are known, more effective by giving them a sense of actually being at the remote location.

A goal of Kaber's research is the design and development of technologies to effectively transport human capabilities into remote environments. The exploration of Mars by robotic systems using Earth-based controllers is one possible application of teleoperator technologies.

The NSF award also will help foster a relationship between Mississippi State's Department of Industrial Engineering and Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Robotics and Process Systems Division.

"The collaboration will involve research into teleoperator systems and human psychological factors influencing telepresence," Kaber said. "It also will develop engineering courses on teleoperator and virtual environment design."

A member of the industrial engineering faculty since 1996, he holds a doctorate from Texas Tech University, with a specialization in human factors and ergonomics. He also earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Central Florida.