22,572 research outputs found
Fatigue evaluation in maintenance and assembly operations by digital human simulation
Virtual human techniques have been used a lot in industrial design in order
to consider human factors and ergonomics as early as possible. The physical
status (the physical capacity of virtual human) has been mostly treated as
invariable in the current available human simulation tools, while indeed the
physical capacity varies along time in an operation and the change of the
physical capacity depends on the history of the work as well. Virtual Human
Status is proposed in this paper in order to assess the difficulty of manual
handling operations, especially from the physical perspective. The decrease of
the physical capacity before and after an operation is used as an index to
indicate the work difficulty. The reduction of physical strength is simulated
in a theoretical approach on the basis of a fatigue model in which fatigue
resistances of different muscle groups were regressed from 24 existing maximum
endurance time (MET) models. A framework based on digital human modeling
technique is established to realize the comparison of physical status. An
assembly case in airplane assembly is simulated and analyzed under the
framework. The endurance time and the decrease of the joint moment strengths
are simulated. The experimental result in simulated operations under laboratory
conditions confirms the feasibility of the theoretical approach
Combining brain-computer interfaces and assistive technologies: state-of-the-art and challenges
In recent years, new research has brought the field of EEG-based Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) out of its infancy and into a phase of relative maturity through many demonstrated prototypes such as brain-controlled wheelchairs, keyboards, and computer games. With this proof-of-concept phase in the past, the time is now ripe to focus on the development of practical BCI technologies that can be brought out of the lab and into real-world applications. In particular, we focus on the prospect of improving the lives of countless disabled individuals through a combination of BCI technology with existing assistive technologies (AT). In pursuit of more practical BCIs for use outside of the lab, in this paper, we identify four application areas where disabled individuals could greatly benefit from advancements in BCI technology, namely,“Communication and Control”, “Motor Substitution”, “Entertainment”, and “Motor Recovery”. We review the current state of the art and possible future developments, while discussing the main research issues in these four areas. In particular, we expect the most progress in the development of technologies such as hybrid BCI architectures, user-machine adaptation algorithms, the exploitation of users’ mental states for BCI reliability and confidence measures, the incorporation of principles in human-computer interaction (HCI) to improve BCI usability, and the development of novel BCI technology including better EEG devices
No Grice: Computers that Lie, Deceive and Conceal
In the future our daily life interactions with other people, with computers, robots and smart environments will be recorded and interpreted by computers or embedded intelligence in environments, furniture, robots, displays, and wearables. These sensors record our activities, our behavior, and our interactions. Fusion of such information and reasoning about such information makes it possible, using computational models of human behavior and activities, to provide context- and person-aware interpretations of human behavior and activities, including determination of attitudes, moods, and emotions. Sensors include cameras, microphones, eye trackers, position and proximity sensors, tactile or smell sensors, et cetera. Sensors can be embedded in an environment, but they can also move around, for example, if they are part of a mobile social robot or if they are part of devices we carry around or are embedded in our clothes or body. \ud
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Our daily life behavior and daily life interactions are recorded and interpreted. How can we use such environments and how can such environments use us? Do we always want to cooperate with these environments; do these environments always want to cooperate with us? In this paper we argue that there are many reasons that users or rather human partners of these environments do want to keep information about their intentions and their emotions hidden from these smart environments. On the other hand, their artificial interaction partner may have similar reasons to not give away all information they have or to treat their human partner as an opponent rather than someone that has to be supported by smart technology.\ud
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This will be elaborated in this paper. We will survey examples of human-computer interactions where there is not necessarily a goal to be explicit about intentions and feelings. In subsequent sections we will look at (1) the computer as a conversational partner, (2) the computer as a butler or diary companion, (3) the computer as a teacher or a trainer, acting in a virtual training environment (a serious game), (4) sports applications (that are not necessarily different from serious game or education environments), and games and entertainment applications
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