Comparative Evaluation of Augmented Reality-based Assistance for Procedural Tasks: A Simulated Control Room Study

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Behaviour & Information Technology in 2019, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2019.1660805This research explores the design, implementation, and evaluation of a prototype augmented reality application that assists operators in performing procedural tasks in control room settings. Our prototype uses a tablet display to supplement an operator’s natural view of existing control panel elements with sequences of interactive visual and attention guiding cues. An experiment, conducted using a nuclear power plant simulator, examined university students completing both standard and emergency operating procedures. The augmented reality condition was compared against two other conditions – a paper-based procedure condition using paper manuals and a computer-based procedure condition using digital procedures presented on a desktop display. The results demonstrated that the augmented reality -based procedure system had benefits in terms of reduced mental workload in comparison to the other two conditions. Regarding task completion time, accuracy, and situation awareness, the augmented reality condition had no significant difference when compared against the computer-based procedure condition but performed better than the paper-based procedure condition. It was also found that the augmented reality condition resulted in fewer intra-team inquiry communication exchanges in comparison to both paper-based and computer-based conditions. The augmented reality condition, however, yielded poorer memory retention score when assessed against the other two conditions

Augmented Reality for Indoor Navigation and Task Guidance

Modern augmented reality systems are becoming increasingly popular in different industrial sectors as augmented reality based applications can improve performance and reduce workload during operations. The efficacy of such systems, however, has not been comprehensively investigated from human factors and performance standpoints. This research explores the design, development and evaluation of augmented reality based prototype applications for two discrete domain areas which include indoor navigation (Part II) and procedural task support in nuclear power plants (Part III). Augmented Reality-Based Indoor Navigation: In the study, we introduced an augmented reality-based indoor navigation application that utilizes pre-scanned environmental features and markerless tracking technology to assist people to navigate in indoor environments. The application can be implemented on electronic devices such as a smartphone or a head-mounted display, providing both visual and auditory instructions. In particular, we examined Google Glass as a wearable head-mounted device in comparison to hand-held navigation aids including a smartphone and a paper map. We conducted both a technical assessment study and a human factors study to comprehensively evaluate the system. The technical assessment established the feasibility and reliability of the system. The human factors study evaluated human-machine system performance measures including perceived accuracy, navigation time, subjective comfort, subjective workload, and route memory retention. The results showed that the wearable device was perceived to be more accurate, but other performance and workload results indicated that the wearable device was not significantly different from the hand-held smartphone. We also found that both digital navigation aids were better than the paper map in terms of shorter navigation time and lower workload, but digital navigation aids resulted in worse route retention. These results could provide empirical evidence supporting future designs of indoor navigation systems. Implications and future research were also discussed. Augmented Reality-Based Task Assistance in Nuclear Power Plants: This research illustrates the design, development and human factors evaluation of an augmented reality based procedural task guidance system, implemented on a hand-held tablet device (ipad), in order to support nuclear power plant operators with main control room operations. After conducting an extensive literature review, we detail the development stages of our new application prototype that employs marker based tracking to superimpose computer generated instructions in the live view of the operators control panel. We had hypothesized that the augmented reality-based procedures would perform better than the traditional methods currently used in nuclear power plants that include computer-based procedures and paper-based procedures. A research study was devised and carried out that compared the three methods of procedural instructions. The performance evaluation and human factors study revealed that the augmented reality based prototype solution reduced operator’s workload, increased operators situation awareness, made processes efficient and less prone to errors and reduced inquiry communication. The results also led us to conclude that augmented reality based procedural assistance poorly supports memory retention and skill learning amongst operators

原子力発電プラントの解体作業支援のための拡張現実感に関する研究

京都大学0048新制・課程博士博士(エネルギー科学)甲第17796号エネ博第279号新制||エネ||58(附属図書館)30603京都大学大学院エネルギー科学研究科エネルギー社会・環境科学専攻(主査)教授 下田 宏, 教授 手塚 哲央, 教授 釜江 克宏学位規則第4条第1項該当Doctor of Energy ScienceKyoto UniversityDFA

Матеріали 4-го Міжнародного семінару з доповненої реальності в освіті (AREdu 2021). Кривий Ріг, Україна. 11 травня 2021 року

Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Augmented Reality in Education (AREdu 2021). Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. May 11, 2021.Матеріали 4-го Міжнародного семінару з доповненої реальності в освіті (AREdu 2021). Кривий Ріг, Україна. 11 травня 2021 рок

Human-Centered Automation for Resilience in Acquiring Construction Field Information

abstract: Resilient acquisition of timely, detailed job site information plays a pivotal role in maintaining the productivity and safety of construction projects that have busy schedules, dynamic workspaces, and unexpected events. In the field, construction information acquisition often involves three types of activities including sensor-based inspection, manual inspection, and communication. Human interventions play critical roles in these three types of field information acquisition activities. A resilient information acquisition system is needed for safer and more productive construction. The use of various automation technologies could help improve human performance by proactively providing the needed knowledge of using equipment, improve the situation awareness in multi-person collaborations, and reduce the mental workload of operators and inspectors. Unfortunately, limited studies consider human factors in automation techniques for construction field information acquisition. Fully utilization of the automation techniques requires a systematical synthesis of the interactions between human, tasks, and construction workspace to reduce the complexity of information acquisition tasks so that human can finish these tasks with reliability. Overall, such a synthesis of human factors in field data collection and analysis is paving the path towards “Human-Centered Automation” (HCA) in construction management. HCA could form a computational framework that supports resilient field data collection considering human factors and unexpected events on dynamic job sites. This dissertation presented an HCA framework for resilient construction field information acquisition and results of examining three HCA approaches that support three use cases of construction field data collection and analysis. The first HCA approach is an automated data collection planning method that can assist 3D laser scan planning of construction inspectors to achieve comprehensive and efficient data collection. The second HCA approach is a Bayesian model-based approach that automatically aggregates the common sense of people from the internet to identify job site risks from a large number of job site pictures. The third HCA approach is an automatic communication protocol optimization approach that maximizes the team situation awareness of construction workers and leads to the early detection of workflow delays and critical path changes. Data collection and simulation experiments extensively validate these three HCA approaches.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering 201

Development of Human Factors Guidance for Human-Sy

This report characterizes a range of advanced HS

Computer vision methods applied to person tracking and identification

2013 - 2014Computer vision methods for tracking and identification of people in constrained and unconstrained environments have been widely explored in the last decades. De- spite of the active research on these topics, they are still open problems for which standards and/or common guidelines have not been defined yet. Application fields of computer vision-based tracking systems are almost infinite. Nowadays, the Aug- mented Reality is a very active field of the research that can benefit from vision-based user’s tracking to work. Being defined as the fusion of real with virtual worlds, the success of an augmented reality application is completely dependant on the efficiency of the exploited tracking method. This work of thesis covers the issues related to tracking systems in augmented reality applications proposing a comprehensive and adaptable framework for marker-based tracking and a deep formal analysis. The provided analysis makes possible to objectively assess and quantify the advantages of using augmented reality principles in heterogeneous operative contexts. Two case studies have been considered, that are the support to maintenance in an industrial environment and to electrocardiography in a typical telemedicine scenario. Advan- tages and drawback are provided as well as future directions of the proposed study. The second topic covered in this thesis relates to the vision-based tracking solution for unconstrained outdoor environments. In video surveillance domain, a tracker is asked to handle variations in illumination, cope with appearance changes of the tracked objects and, possibly, predict motion to better anticipate future positions. ... [edited by Author]XIII n.s

DOE-NE Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program

Nuclear power has contributed almost 20% of the t