Wright State alumnus John McIntire '14 wins prestigious national aerospace award for dissertation on stereoscopic research.
It’s a great idea — using 3-D technology for aerial refueling, a delicate and dangerous operation. The problem is that stereoscopic displays can potentially cause eyestrain, nausea and even misperception among the refueling operators as they try to align the two aircraft and avoid mid-air collisions.
The issue was the focus of research by John McIntire, an alumnus of the Wright State University Human Factors Psychology Doctoral Program who recently won the prestigious 2015 Stanley N. Roscoe Award for best doctoral dissertation in a research area related to the field of aerospace human factors. “At Wright State I got to work with some of the top names in psychology research,” McIntire said. “My adviser was one of the world’s experts on vision and perception.” McIntire's advisor was Scott Watamaniuk, professor and director of the graduate program in the Department of Psychology. Watamaniuk's current research is focused on how motion is used to segregate the visual environment, the attentional advantages exhibited by avid action video game players, and how moving sounds impact visual motion perception.
McIntire obtained his Ph.D. in psychology at Wright State in 2014. He is an engineering research psychologist at the Battlespace Visualization Branch of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 711th Human Performance Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, studies and develops expertise in 3-D displays and 3-D perception for military application.
“Stanley Roscoe is a huge name in the human-factors field,” said McIntire. “I’m honored to be counted among the people who have won this award.” Roscoe, who died in 2007, was known for pioneering the application of flight and simulator experiments in the design of flight controls and displays at the Hughes Aircraft Company as well as contributing to the designs of the Northrop F-89, the Convair F-102 and F-106 and the Lockheed YF-12 airplanes and the TOW missile manual control system. The award is given in his name by the Aerospace Human Factors Association.
At Wright-Patterson, McIntire studies and develops expertise in 3-D displays and 3-D perception for military application. Colorful, high-resolution displays are used to visualize and make sense of complex sets of data, which can be overwhelming and result in information overload. But McIntire says an estimated 25 percent of people who view 3-D displays experience discomfort or are affected in some negative way.
“If you try to push some of these 3-D displays into military applications, you are probably going to run into this problem of viewer discomfort,” he said. “There is not an easy way around it from an engineering perspective. It’s something that will require future research and development to see if anything can be done to subdue it.”
