Deployment of a Full-Scope Commercial Nuclear Power Plant Control Room Simulator at the Idaho National Laboratory

The INL operates the HSSL to conduct research in the design and evaluation of advanced reactor control rooms, integration of intelligent support systems to assist operators, development and assessment of advanced human performance models, and visualizations to assess advanced operational concepts across various infrastructures. This advanced facility consists of a reconfigurable simulator and a virtual reality capability (known as the Computer-Aided Virtual Environment (CAVE)) (Figure 2). It supports human factors research, including human-in-the-loop performance, HSI, and analog and digital hybrid control displays. It can be applied to the development and evaluation of control systems and displays for complex systems such as existing and advanced NPP control rooms, command and control systems, and advance emergency operations centers. The HSSL incorporates a reconfigurable control room simulator, which is currently housed in the Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES), a joint venture of the DOE and the Idaho University System. The simulator is a platform- and plant-neutral environment intended for full-scope and part-task testing of operator performance in various control room configurations. The simulator is not limited to a particular plant or even simulator architecture. It can support engineering simulator platforms from multiple vendors using digital interfaces. Due to its ability to be reconfigured, it is possible to switch the HSI - not just to digital panels but also to different control modalities such as those using greater plant automation or intelligent alarm filtering. The simulator currently includes three operator workstations, each capable of driving up to eight 30-inch monitors. The size and number of monitors varies depending on the particular front-end simulator deployed for a simulator study. These operator workstations would typically be used for the shift supervisor or senior reactor operator, reactor operator, and assistant reactor operator in current US NPPs. In addition to the three workstations, information can be shared between the workstations and further displayed on a large-screen overview display or a panel mimic. An 82-inch high-definition display is commonly used for the overview display

Emotions and cognitive workload in economic decision processes - A NeuroIS Approach

The influence of cognitive and emotions on decision processes have been recently highlighted. Emotions interplay with the process of cognition, and determine decision processes. In this work, the role of external and internal influences on economic decision processes are studied. A NeuroIS method is applied for measuring emotions and cognitive workload. The lack of a suitable experimental platform for performing NeuroIS studies was recognized and the platform Brownie was developed and evaluated

MODEL-BASED ASSESSMENT OF ADAPTIVE AUTOMATION’S UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Recent technological advances require development of human-centered principles for their inclusion into complex systems. While such programs incorporate revolutionary hardware and software advances, there is a necessary space for including human operator design considerations, such as cognitive workload. As technologies mature, it is essential to understand the impacts that these emerging systems will have on cognitive workload. Adaptive automation is a solution that seeks to manage cognitive workload at optimal levels. Human performance modeling shows potential for modeling the effects of adaptive automation on cognitive workload. However, the introduction of adaptive automation into a system can also present unintended negative consequences to an operator. This dissertation investigated potential negative unintended consequences of adaptive automation through the development of human performance models of a multi-tasking simulation. One hundred twenty participants were enrolled in three human-in-the-loop experimental studies (forty participants each) that collected objective and subjective surrogate measures of cognitive workload to validate the models. Results from this research indicate that there are residual increases in operator workload after transitions in system states between manual and automatic control of a task that need to be included in human performance models and in system design considerations.Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.Lieutenant Colonel, United States ArmyCommanding Officer, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Aviation and Missile Center Agency, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama 35898-500

A Human-Centric Metaverse Enabled by Brain-Computer Interface: A Survey

The growing interest in the Metaverse has generated momentum for members of academia and industry to innovate toward realizing the Metaverse world. The Metaverse is a unique, continuous, and shared virtual world where humans embody a digital form within an online platform. Through a digital avatar, Metaverse users should have a perceptual presence within the environment and can interact and control the virtual world around them. Thus, a human-centric design is a crucial element of the Metaverse. The human users are not only the central entity but also the source of multi-sensory data that can be used to enrich the Metaverse ecosystem. In this survey, we study the potential applications of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technologies that can enhance the experience of Metaverse users. By directly communicating with the human brain, the most complex organ in the human body, BCI technologies hold the potential for the most intuitive human-machine system operating at the speed of thought. BCI technologies can enable various innovative applications for the Metaverse through this neural pathway, such as user cognitive state monitoring, digital avatar control, virtual interactions, and imagined speech communications. This survey first outlines the fundamental background of the Metaverse and BCI technologies. We then discuss the current challenges of the Metaverse that can potentially be addressed by BCI, such as motion sickness when users experience virtual environments or the negative emotional states of users in immersive virtual applications. After that, we propose and discuss a new research direction called Human Digital Twin, in which digital twins can create an intelligent and interactable avatar from the user's brain signals. We also present the challenges and potential solutions in synchronizing and communicating between virtual and physical entities in the Metaverse

Increasing workload on simulated remotely piloted system interaction and task completion – gamers versus non-gamers

With the current high rate of development and deployment of Remotely Piloted Aerial Systems (RPAS) for both commercial and military sectors globally, it is key to understand the implications this technology has on current and future RPAS operators and the consequential effect on licensing, training and performance measurement. This thesis investigates aspects of training and potential objective performance measurement of RPAS operators, this is carried out by reviewing current literature relating to RPAS and associated human factors thus a gap analysis was undertaken and a set of experiments/evaluations were devised to provide important new insights. Attention is drawn to the type of skill set required for future RPAS operations. A factor has been to understand whether a regular computer games player displays differing simulator interaction, in this case information gathering and analysis patterns, to that of someone with limited to no computer games experience. To achieve the aims of the research experimentation had to be carried which required the development of an appropriate simulator followed by the inclusion of a case study and the creation of bespoke performance data analysis software, SimPACT. Although performance differentials have been observed through action it was hoped to be able to identify performance differential characteristics through the means of evaluating the use of disparate physical data sets; the research, in fact, identified no significant difference between data set use and it must be concluded that any pre-action performance differential cannot be measured, at least not with the equipment available. However computer gamers, rather than having differing information acquisition strategies, have differing and more effective information retention and processing pathways likely to have been developed through continuous gaming which can be applied to any game-type environment and, potentially, any type of interactive task. These results have been proven to be statistically viable and observable. This research has contributed to the understanding of human performance measurement within the RPAS sector, including the addition of new data processing software, as well as provide new evidence relating to difference within human data gathering and processing between groups of differing experiences

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 324)

This bibliography lists 200 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during May, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

A Framework for Students Profile Detection

Some of the biggest problems tackling Higher Education Institutions are students’ drop-out and academic disengagement. Physical or psychological disabilities, social-economic or academic marginalization, and emotional and affective problems, are some of the factors that can lead to it. This problematic is worsened by the shortage of educational resources, that can bridge the communication gap between the faculty staff and the affective needs of these students. This dissertation focus in the development of a framework, capable of collecting analytic data, from an array of emotions, affects and behaviours, acquired either by human observations, like a teacher in a classroom or a psychologist, or by electronic sensors and automatic analysis software, such as eye tracking devices, emotion detection through facial expression recognition software, automatic gait and posture detection, and others. The framework establishes the guidance to compile the gathered data in an ontology, to enable the extraction of patterns outliers via machine learning, which assist the profiling of students in critical situations, like disengagement, attention deficit, drop-out, and other sociological issues. Consequently, it is possible to set real-time alerts when these profiles conditions are detected, so that appropriate experts could verify the situation and employ effective procedures. The goal is that, by providing insightful real-time cognitive data and facilitating the profiling of the students’ problems, a faster personalized response to help the student is enabled, allowing academic performance improvements

Affective games:a multimodal classification system

Affective gaming is a relatively new field of research that exploits human emotions to influence gameplay for an enhanced player experience. Changes in player’s psychology reflect on their behaviour and physiology, hence recognition of such variation is a core element in affective games. Complementary sources of affect offer more reliable recognition, especially in contexts where one modality is partial or unavailable. As a multimodal recognition system, affect-aware games are subject to the practical difficulties met by traditional trained classifiers. In addition, inherited game-related challenges in terms of data collection and performance arise while attempting to sustain an acceptable level of immersion. Most existing scenarios employ sensors that offer limited freedom of movement resulting in less realistic experiences. Recent advances now offer technology that allows players to communicate more freely and naturally with the game, and furthermore, control it without the use of input devices. However, the affective game industry is still in its infancy and definitely needs to catch up with the current life-like level of adaptation provided by graphics and animation

Eye Movement and Pupil Measures: A Review

Our subjective visual experiences involve complex interaction between our eyes, our brain, and the surrounding world. It gives us the sense of sight, color, stereopsis, distance, pattern recognition, motor coordination, and more. The increasing ubiquity of gaze-aware technology brings with it the ability to track gaze and pupil measures with varying degrees of fidelity. With this in mind, a review that considers the various gaze measures becomes increasingly relevant, especially considering our ability to make sense of these signals given different spatio-temporal sampling capacities. In this paper, we selectively review prior work on eye movements and pupil measures. We first describe the main oculomotor events studied in the literature, and their characteristics exploited by different measures. Next, we review various eye movement and pupil measures from prior literature. Finally, we discuss our observations based on applications of these measures, the benefits and practical challenges involving these measures, and our recommendations on future eye-tracking research directions