Project Details
Projekt
Mediated Interaction between Control Room and Field Operator
Subject Area
Human Factors, Ergonomics, Human-Machine Systems
Term
from 2016 to 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 282864722
Mediated interaction between the Control Room Operator (CRO) and the Field Operator (FO) in processindustries has to cope with diverging interaction and information spaces. Both roles dispose of information his or her counterpart needs for successful cooperation and, at the same time, lack information the other side has. Due to this information skew communication between control room and field is error-prone. We assume that the process of problem-solving may be enhanced by digitally transmitting part of the interaction and information space of each role and augmenting it with useful visual representation. Such a transmission can be realized using mobile devices. It is crucial to adapt transmission and presentation to a concrete task, its goals and its requirements. This project aims to identify how such an adaption may be achieved, develop prototypical solutions and empirically assess the impact on productivity, communication and team situation awareness of the plant personnel.The first goal can be separated into three partial objectives:1. DisambiguationHow can it be ensured that CRO and FO talk about the same things? How can the effort for verifying and guaranteeing a common understanding be minimized? How can switching between different types of information (e.g. special versus functional information) be simplified? How can an understanding of correlation be promoted for CRO and FO?2. Giving the FO feedback about the effects of her/his actionsHow should the FO be presented with the effects her/his actions have on the process parameters? Which of these parameters should he or she see? On what level of abstraction should he or she see them? What influence should he or she have on the frequency and type of this presentation?3. Informing the CRO about the action of the FOWhat actions of the FO should be made available to the CRO? How should they be presented to her or him? At what point in time and what temporal resolution should he or she be informed about these actions? How can it be avoided to put a double burden on the CRO by forcing him to communicate his actions to the CRO?In order to answer these research questions, three interaction concepts will be developed and implemented as vertical prototypes. The prototypes will be evaluated in an on-site user study with skilled plant personnel. This allows us to realistically assess the effects of the different approaches on the cooperative process of problem-solving. The evaluated concepts differ mainly in two respects: The degree of regulation and the type of informational content of the communication. According to the underlying interaction principles the concepts are characterized as monitoring, controlling and adaptive.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
