Human Factors and the application Virtual Environments

1
Applying virtual environments - Human Factors
studies Mark Williams Advanced Technology
Centres - Sowerby
2
Introduction
3
BAE SYSTEMS ATC HF Research
Introduction
4
Human Factors Department
Training
Maintainability
Sensors, displays and HMI
Human Factors Integration

• Basic Research
• Mental Modelling
• Vision Modelling

• Human Factors of
• Decision Making
• Training
• Team working
• VR/ Multi-sensory interaction
• Process Analysis

• Assessment of
• Situational Awareness
• Workload
• (Human Reliability)

Longer Term Speculative Physiological Methods
Technology Tracking
5
Cockpit Design - Displays
6
Some properties of displays (problematic and
otherwise)

• Human visual accommodative (focussing) response
  - in aircraft head up displays and other devices
  with virtual imagery, the plane of focussing will
  not necessarily be at the point of physical
  image.
• Potential for conflict between the accommodative
  response driving vergence, stereoscopic cues also
  driving vergence and the feedback paths for both.
  In short studies of these effects, 50 of
  participants had difficulty in de-coupling the
  accommodative and stereoscopic cues

Cockpit Design - Displays
7
Cockpit Design - Displays
8
Cockpit Design - Displays
9
Cockpit Design - Displays
10
Product support

• Design for maintainability
• VR for training?

11
Design for Maintainability
12
Increasing awareness of whole lifecycle costs
Percentages of UK Defence Budget Spent on
Personnel and Equipment (source DERA August 2000)
Product Support
13
Human Digital Modeling and Virtual Reality
Product Support - Maintainability
14
Product Support - Maintainability
15
Product Support - Maintainability
16
Product Support - Maintainability
17
Product Support - Maintainability
18
The general conclusion was Each package has
its strengths, but non currently fulfils the
projected usage.
19
Virtual Environments and training
20
TSVR Experiment

• Training, Simulation and Virtual Reality (TSVR)
• Cross company forum
• An experiment to compare immersive VR with
  conventional computer based training (CBT)

21

• General Experimental Requirements
• Time and budgetary constraints -extensive systems
  modelling not possible for VR! Similarly CBT
  system would be mid-fi (but have good systems
  underlying)
• Use of existing hardware and software
• Reuse of available data (e.g. geometry)
• Spatial elements to task

Product Support - Training
22
CBT version of training
Product Support - Training
23
CBT version of training
Product Support - Training
24
CBT version of training
Product Support - Training
25
Virtual Hawk cockpit simulation
Product Support - Training
26
Visual cueing to move throttle
Product Support - Training
27
Selecting throttle using grasp
Product Support - Training
28

• Full details of experimental results to appear in
  ITEC proceedings in April 2001 but a summary
  would include
• VR system arguably more expensive even than
  high-fidelity simulator. But more current
  hardware and software would probably change the
  balance.
• Time to training generally longer - partly due to
  unfamiliarity with hardware - and less likely to
  successfully complete start-up procedure
• Although subjects were more tired and reported
  the task more difficult, they would be more
  likely to volunteer for this experiment than the
  CBT version!
• Specific problems with gesture recognition as a
  means of picking objects
• Questionable whether the task was sufficiently
  spatial but generally participants found the VR
  environment more familiar

29
Some future developments
30
Electrode montage for VR environment trial
Objective assessments
31
Manipulating controls in virtual simulation
Objective assessments
32
Recording taken in VR environment
Objective assessments
33
Band-Power OutputRecord in VR Environment
Eyes Closed
Objective assessments
34
THE END