Human-centered information fusion: the emerging role of humans in situation awareness

Traditionally, information or data fusion has sought to combine information from multiple physical sensors, such as radar and acoustic sensors, to improve our knowledge of the physical environment. Recent changes in information fusion involve; (1) an interest in characterizing the human landscape as well as the physical landscape, (2) use of humans as observers or "soft" sensors, (3) explicit use of human pattern recognition via advanced visualization and sonficiation, and (4) use of multiple humans for dynamic, ad hoc, collaboration for analysis. This paper describes these new trends and describes on-going research at the Pennsylvania State University in all of these areas.