Performing Ergonomic Analysis in Virtual Environments: A Structured Protocol to Assess Humans Interaction

Author(s):  
Maura Mengoni ◽  
Margherita Peruzzini ◽  
Ferruccio Mandorli ◽  
Monica Bordegoni ◽  
Giandomenico Caruso

Virtual Reality (VR) systems provide new modes of human computer interaction that can support several industrial design applications improving time savings, reducing prototyping costs, and supporting the identification of design errors before production. Enhancing the interaction between humans and virtual prototypes by involving multiple sensorial modalities, VR can be adopted to perform ergonomic analysis. The main problems deal with the evaluation both of functional and cognitive sample users behavior as VR interfaces influence the perception of the ergonomic human factors. We state that ergonomic analysis performed in virtual environment can be successful only if supported with a structured protocol for the study both of functional and cognitive aspects and with the proper VR technologies combination that answers to the specific analysis tasks. An ergonomic analysis protocol is presented. It allows the assessment of the consumers’ response in term of behavioral and cognitive human factors, comprehending both operational and emotional agents. The protocol is also used to identify the best combination of visualization and haptic interfaces to perform the analysis. An experimental example, belonging to house appliances field is adopted to investigate the application of the protocol in the virtual set up.

Author(s):  
Randall Spain ◽  
Benjamin Goldberg ◽  
Jeffrey Hansberger ◽  
Tami Griffith ◽  
Jeremy Flynn ◽  
...  

Recent advances in technology have made virtual environments, virtual reality, augmented reality, and simulations more affordable and accessible to researchers, companies, and the general public, which has led to many novel use cases and applications. A key objective of human factors research and practice is determining how these technology-rich applications can be designed and applied to improve human performance across a variety of contexts. This session will demonstrate some of the distinct and diverse uses of virtual environments and mixed reality environments in an alternative format. The session will begin with each demonstrator providing a brief overview of their virtual environment (VE) and a description of how it has been used to address a particular problem or research need. Following the description portion of the session, each VE will be set-up at a demonstration station in the room, and session attendees will be encouraged to directly interact with the virtual environment and ask demonstrators questions about their research and inquire about the effectiveness of using VE for research, training, and evaluation purposes. The overall objective of this alternative session is to increase the awareness of how human factors professionals use VE technologies and increase the awareness of the capabilities and limitations of VE in supporting the work of HF professionals.


Author(s):  
Marina Carulli ◽  
Monica Bordegoni ◽  
Umberto Cugini

The sense of smell has a great importance in our daily life. In recent years, smells have been used for marketing purposes with the aim of improving the person’s mood and of communicating information about products as household cleaners and food. However, the scent design discipline can be also applied to any kind of products to communicate their features to customers. In the area of Virtual Reality several researches have focused on integrating smells in virtual environments. The research questions addressed in this work concern whether Virtual Prototypes, including the sense of smell, can be used for evaluating products as effectively as studies performed in real environments, and also whether smells can contribute to increase the users’ sense of presence in the virtual environment. For this purpose, a Virtual Reality experimental framework including a prototype of a wearable olfactory display has been set up, and experimental tests have been performed.


Author(s):  
Monica Bordegoni ◽  
Marina Carulli

The sense of smell has a great importance in our daily life. Recently, smells have been used for marketing purposes for improving the people's mood and for communicating information about products as household cleaners and food. However, the scent design discipline can be used for creating a “scent identity” of these products not traditionally associated to a specific smell, in order to communicate their features to customers. In the area of virtual reality (VR), several researches concerned the integration of smells in virtual environments. The research questions addressed in this paper concern if virtual prototypes (VP), including smell simulation, can be used for evaluating products as effectively as studies performed in real environments, and also if smells can enhance the users' sense of presence in virtual environments. For this purpose, a VR experimental framework including a prototype of a wearable olfactory display (wOD) has been set up, and experimental tests have been carried out.


Author(s):  
Sarah Beadle ◽  
Randall Spain ◽  
Benjamin Goldberg ◽  
Mahdi Ebnali ◽  
Shannon Bailey ◽  
...  

Virtual environments and immersive technologies are growing in popularity for human factors purposes. Whether it is training in a low-risk environment or using simulated environments for testing future automated vehicles, virtual environments show promise for the future of our field. The purpose of this session is to have current human factors practitioners and researchers demonstrate their immersive technologies. This is the eighth iteration of the “Me and My VE” interactive session. Presenters in this session will provide a brief introduction of their virtual reality, augmented reality, or virtual environment work before engaging with attendees in an interactive demonstration period. During this period, the presenters will each have a multimedia display of their immersive technology as well as discuss their work and development efforts. The selected demonstrations cover issues of designing immersive interfaces, military and medical training, and using simulation to better understand complex tasks. This includes a mix of government, industry, and academic-based work. Attendees will be virtually immersed in the technologies and research presented allowing for interaction with the work being done in this field.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1446
Author(s):  
Jacopo Orsilli ◽  
Anna Galli ◽  
Letizia Bonizzoni ◽  
Michele Caccia

Among the possible variants of X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), applications exploiting scanning Macro-XRF (MA-XRF) are lately widespread as they allow the visualization of the element distribution maintaining a non-destructive approach. The surface is scanned with a focused or collimated X-ray beam of millimeters or less: analyzing the emitted fluorescence radiation, also elements present below the surface contribute to the elemental distribution image obtained, due to the penetrative nature of X-rays. The importance of this method in the investigation of historical paintings is so obvious—as the elemental distribution obtained can reveal hidden sub-surface layers, including changes made by the artist, or restorations, without any damage to the object—that recently specific international conferences have been held. The present paper summarizes the advantages and limitations of using MA-XRF considering it as an imaging technique, in synergy with other hyperspectral methods, or combining it with spot investigations. The most recent applications in the cultural Heritage field are taken into account, demonstrating how obtained 2D-XRF maps can be of great help in the diagnostic applied on Cultural Heritage materials. Moreover, a pioneering analysis protocol based on the Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) algorithm is presented, unifying the MA-XRF standard approach with punctual XRF, exploiting information from the mapped area as a database to extend the comprehension to data outside the scanned region, and working independently from the acquisition set-up. Experimental application on some reference pigment layers and a painting by Giotto are presented as validation of the proposed method.


2021 ◽  
pp. 245592962199811
Author(s):  
Lei Wang

Water culture heritages in China are numerous and diverse with unbalanced regional distribution. Due to natural and human factors, some of the water culture heritages are disappearing gradually. In view of this situation, it is urgent for relevant government departments to strengthen supervision of these sites and increase investment, take measures to promote their effective protection, and encourage tourism authorities to develop China’s water culture heritage according to local conditions. It is imperative to set up protection, collection and research institutions that can sustain the national water culture heritage surveys which have been carried out over several years.


1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Verry

Susan Lederman (SL) is an invited member of the International Council of Research Fellows for the Braille Research Center and a Fellow of he Canadian Psychology Association. She was also an Associate of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research in the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Programme for 8 years. A Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Computing & Information Science at Queen's University at Kingston (Ontario, Canada), she has written and coauthored numerous articles on tactile psychophysics, haptic perception and cognition, motor control, and haptic applications in robotics, teleoperation, and virtual environments. She is currently the coorganizer of the Annual Symposium a Haptic Interfaces for Teleoperation and Virtual Environment Systems. René Verry (RV) is a psychology professor at Millikin University (Decatur, IL), where she teaches a variety of courses in the experimental core, including Sensation and Perception. She chose the often-subordinated somatic senses as the focus of her interview, and recruited Susan Lederman as our research specialist.


1997 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 14-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Smith

Robotica ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-478
Author(s):  
Susan J. Lederman ◽  
Robert D. Howe

SIXTH ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM ON HAPTIC INTERFACESThe Sixth Annual Symposium for Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems was held on Nov. 17–18, 1997 in Dallas, Texas. Haptic interfaces are devices that allow human–machine interaction through force and touch. Areas of application include, but are by no means limited, to telemanipulation (for work in hazardous or challenging environments such as space exploration, undersea operations, microsurgery and minimally-invasive surgery, and hazardous waste clean-up) and virtual environments (for realistic interactions with computer simulations in critical procedure training, architectural design, product prototyping, and data visualization).


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