Effects of tactile cueing on concurrent performance of military and robotics tasks in a simulated multitasking environment

This study examined the concurrent performance of military gunnery, robotics control and communication tasks in a simulated environment. More specifically, the study investigated how aided target recognition (AiTR) capabilities (delivered either through tactile or tactile + visual cueing) for the gunnery task might benefit overall performance. Results showed that AiTR benefited not only the gunnery task, but also the concurrent robotics and communication tasks. The participants' spatial ability was found to be a good indicator of their gunnery and robotics task performance. However, when AiTR was available to assist their gunnery task, those participants of lower spatial ability were able to perform their robotics tasks as well as those of higher spatial ability. Finally, participants' workload assessment was significantly higher when they teleoperated (i.e. remotely operated) a robot and when their gunnery task was unassisted. These results will further understanding of multitasking performance in military tasking environments. These results will also facilitate the implementation of robots in military settings and will provide useful data to military system designs.     

UAV-guided navigation for ground robot tele-operation in a military reconnaissance environment

A military reconnaissance environment was simulated to examine the performance of ground robotics operators who were instructed to utilise streaming video from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to navigate his/her ground robot to the locations of the targets. The effects of participants' spatial ability on their performance and workloadwere also investigated. Results showed that participants' overall performance (speed and accuracy) was better when she/he had access to images from larger UAVs with fixed orientations, compared with other UAV conditions (baseline- no UAV, micro air vehicle and UAV with orbiting views). Participants experienced the highest workload when the UAV was orbiting. Those individuals with higher spatial ability performed significantly better and reported less workload than those with lower spatial ability.

The results of the current study will further understanding of ground robot operators' target search performance based on streaming video from UAVs. The results will also facilitate the implementation of ground/air robots in military environments and will be useful to the future military system design and training community.     

Supervisory control of multiple robots in dynamic tasking environments

A military targeting environment was simulated to examine the effects of an intelligent route-planning agent RoboLeader, which could support dynamic robot re-tasking based on battlefield developments, on the performance of robotics operators. We manipulated the level of assistance (LOAs) provided by RoboLeader as well as the presence of a visualisation tool that provided feedback to the participants on their primary task (target encapsulation) performance. Results showed that the participants' primary task benefited from RoboLeader on all LOAs conditions compared to manual performance; however, visualisation had little effect. Frequent video gamers demonstrated significantly better situation awareness of the mission environment than did infrequent gamers. Those participants with higher spatial ability performed better on a secondary target detection task than did those with lower spatial ability. Finally, participants' workload assessments were significantly lower when they were assisted by RoboLeader than when they performed the target entrapment task manually. Practitioner Summary: This study demonstrated the utility of an intelligent agent for enhancing robotics operators' supervisory control performance as well as reducing their workload during a complex urban scenario involving moving targets. The results furthered the understanding of the interplay among level-of-autonomy, multitasking performance and individual differences in military tasking environments.     

Impact of communication medium on task performance and satisfaction: an examination of media-richness theory

Among several theories to explain how communications media affect task performance, media-richness theory is often cited. It proposes that task performance will be improved when task-information processing requirements are matched to a medium's ability to convey information richness.The objective of the work reported here was to examine media-richness theory using a laboratory experiment. The investigation focused on the effect of four different communication media (text, audio, video, and face-to-face) on task performance and satisfaction of both, intellective and negotiation tasks. For the negotiation task, a social psychological factor, consonancy, was used to examine the effect of interaction on media and performance.Overall, the study did not support media-richness theory. There were no task–medium interaction effects on either decision quality or decision time. Decision quality was the same for both the tasks. Audio was the most efficient medium, but not necessarily the most satisfying. This study did not support the combined theory of media richness and social psychology for the negotiation task. There was no significant media-by-consonancy interaction in the negotiation payoff.     

Spatial ability subfactors and their influences on a computer-based information search task

OBJECTIVE: The present study examined the relationship between two distinct subfactors of spatial ability and performance in an information search task modeled on browsing the Web. BACKGROUND: Previous studies have found relationships between various measures of spatial ability and performance in a wide variety of computer-based tasks. METHOD: In the search task 101 participants (18-29 years of age) searched for the answer to a question by navigating the system. They completed the experimental task as well as a battery of cognitive ability measures that included two different measures of spatial ability. RESULTS: The results indicate that spatial orientation ability was related to performance with tasks that were high in their navigational requirement (engendered by the use of a novel aid), whereas spatial visualization was unrelated to performance in any task condition. CONCLUSION: A closer inspection of the cognitive requirements of a task may reveal what interventions could be most useful when designing computer systems or developing training programs. APPLICATION: Given the unique differences between the different spatial abilities, the current results suggest the design of navigational aids that place less demand on spatial orientation ability.     

Impact of the motion and visual complexity of the background on players' performance in video game-like displays

The visual interfaces of virtual environments such as video games often show scenes where objects are superimposed on a moving background. Three experiments were designed to better understand the impact of the complexity and/or overall motion of two types of visual backgrounds often used in video games on the detection and use of superimposed, stationary items. The impact of background complexity and motion was assessed during two typical video game tasks: a relatively complex visual search task and a classic, less demanding shooting task. Background motion impaired participants' performance only when they performed the shooting game task, and only when the simplest of the two backgrounds was used. In contrast, and independently of background motion, performance on both tasks was impaired when the complexity of the background increased. Eye movement recordings demonstrated that most of the findings reflected the impact of low-level features of the two backgrounds on gaze control.     

A quantitative method for evaluating the complexity of implementing and performing game features in physically-interactive gamified applications

Gamification aims to implement game features in non-game contexts, with the goal of increasing the motivation of individuals performing a specific task or set of tasks. The tasks themselves, can focus on cognitive behavior change (e.g., overcoming anxiety) or physical behavior change (e.g., overcoming a shoulder injury). Current gamification methods primarily serve as guidelines and principles for the design of gamified applications. Moreover, these methods often overlook the complexity of actually implementing the game features and do not consider the effects that game features have on individuals' ability to perform a target task. A knowledge gap exists in understanding the tradeoffs between the complexity of implementing a game feature and the impact it has on increasing individuals' motivation and performance on a particular task or set of tasks. This paper presents a method for evaluating the complexity of implementing game features and the physical effort required to perform the tasks of the application, with a specific focus on physically-interactive gamified applications. Designers will gain a fundamental understanding of how the implementation of specific game features, contributes toward the objective of the application. A case study is presented that focuses on physically-interactive gamified applications in a virtual environment. Empirical results measuring the effects of game features on participants' performance are presented, which provide evidence in support of the metrics proposed in this study. Knowledge gained from this work will inform designers on how to manage their resources more efficiently and predict possible design issues (e.g., not meeting the objective of the application) while creating gamification applications.     

Visual search in vibration environments: Effects of spatial ability,stimulus size and stimulus density

Visual search is one type of common encountered human-computer interaction tasks, but it has less been examined in vibration environments. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of one user characteristic (spatial ability) and two stimulus characteristics (i.e., stimulus size and stimulus density) on visual search performance during single- and double-target tasks in simulated vibration environments. Twenty-four participants attended an experiment where they were instructed to perform single- and double-target visual search tasks with varied levels of stimulus size and stimulus density under static, slight and moderate vibration environments, respectively. Results indicated that the two vibration conditions achieved comparable visual search performance, perceived visual fatigue, and perceived comfort with static condition across task types. Stimuli size and stimulus density yielded significant effects on visual search time in both single- and double-target tasks (p's < 0.001). Participants with high spatial ability were faster than those with low spatial ability in double-target tasks (p = 0.042). Users preferred interface design with medium-to-large stimulus size and low-to-medium stimulus density in visual search.     

Investigating the Impact of Task Change Type and Transparency on Transfer of Learning

This article investigates users' transfer of learning on two e-mail platforms with different transparency levels and task change types. The objective is to provide implication on task design in product upgrading. A mixed design of 4 (types of task change)?×?2 (transparency)?×?2 blocks (Hotmail and Outlook platform) within-subjects design and 3 levels of expertise between-subjects design, both having repeated measures on type of task change and transparency, was used to evaluate participants' transfer of learning. A main effect of both transparency and task change type is expected. High-transparency tasks are expected to lead to higher performance than low-transparency tasks. Commission task changes are expected to lead to lower performance than other types of task change due to the addition of new task steps. The results showed that commission task changes led to the greatest disturbance on user performance, whereas performance is best during sequence task changes in which participants have a positive transfer in performance time per step and no increase in error ratio. Participants also showed better transfer of learning in high-transparency tasks. The conclusion is that transparency level is critical in the future design of product changes. A refined design approach is necessary to ensure that the design tasks are highly transparent to users. In addition, to facilitate user's transfer of learning, commission task changes should be reduced and sequence task changes should be increased.     

The effect of distractor modality and processing code on human-automation interaction

We examined the effect of distractor characteristics (modality and processing code) on visual search performance and interaction with an automated decision aid. Multiple Resource Theory suggests that concurrent tasks that are processed similarly (e.g. two visual tasks) will cause greater interference than tasks that are not (e.g., a visual and auditory task). The impact of tasks that share processing and perceptual demands and their interaction with human-automation interaction is not established. In order to examine this, participants completed two blocks of a luggage screening simulation with or without the assistance of an automated aid. For one block, participants performed a concurrent distractor task drawn from one of four combinations of modality and processing code: auditory-verbal; auditory-spatial; visual-verbal; visual-spatial. We measured sensitivity, criterion setting, perceived workload, system trust, perceived system reliability, compliance, reliance, and confidence. Participants demonstrated highest sensitivity when performing with an auditory-spatial secondary task. Automation compliance was higher when the auditory-spatial distraction was present versus absent; however, system trust was highest in the auditory-verbal condition. Confidence (when disagreeing with the aid) was also highest when the distractor was auditory. This study indicates that some forms of auditory ‘distractors’ may actually help performance; these results further contribute to understanding how distractions influence performance when operators interact with automation and have implications for improved work environment and system design.     

Web-based undergraduate chemistry problem-solving: The interplay of task performance,domain knowledge and web-searching strategies

This study investigates the effect of Web-based Chemistry Problem-Solving, with the attributes of Web-searching and problem-solving scaffolds, on undergraduate students' problem-solving task performance. In addition, the nature and extent of Web-searching strategies students used and its correlation with task performance and domain knowledge also were examined. We recruited a total of 183 undergraduate students, all of whom are taking the freshman chemistry course, to participate in the study to solve three chemistry tasks across a semester. Mandated screen-capture software captured participants' on-screen Web-searching processes were recorded every five seconds. Results demonstrated that students' problem-solving performance was significantly improved from task 1 to 3, and students with more domain knowledge outperformed students with less domain knowledge. Students with higher problem-solving performance employed more existing knowledge and metacognitive Web-searching strategies; and students with lower problem-solving performance employed more cognitive Web-searching strategies. In addition, students' problem-solving performance was correlated with their domain knowledge, use of existing knowledge, and metacognitive Web-searching strategies. Moreover, students' use of existing knowledge was the major factor for predicting their problem-solving performance according to the regression model.     

Developing spatial visualization and mental rotation with a digital puzzle game at primary school level

Spatial ability has been recognized as a significant human skill involving the retrieval, retention, and transformation of visual information in a special context. The enhancement of the spatial ability and the effective method of training are rarely considered as an area of study in the education field. This study focuses on the enhancement of spatial visualization and mental rotation, which are two major components of spatial ability, through the practice of puzzle games. This study adopts an experimental approach to test whether the game is effective in facilitating student's development of spatial visualization and mental rotation. 79 primary school students in Taiwan are included to be volunteer participants. Two instruments are adopted to measure the participants' performance of spatial visualization and mental rotation. The research findings show that the designed puzzle games effectively improve the participants' abilities in spatial visualization and mental rotation and that the traditional puzzle games can only enhance participants' mental rotation. This study suggests that the theory-based design of multimedia games can offer a more effective learning environment for developing and improving cognitive skills.     

The effect of information availability in a user interface (UI) on in-vehicle task performance: A pilot study

When performing an in-vehicle operation, the information display is a crucial element that decides the operator's control behaviors. The interaction between information presentation and operator's in-vehicle task performance is critical for vehicle safety. The question arises: What is the optimum availability of information? The aim of this study is to investigate the relationships between different information availabilities and operation performances as operators interact with an in-vehicle user interface (UI) to complete a simulated train driving task. The results show that some types of information significantly affect the operator's task performance. Information that improved the task performances were closely associated with specific task requirements. The participants' task performance indicated that they had a better awareness of a task situation and were better at controlling their virtual vehicle when completing time and process-restricted tasks with limited, relevant information. These results support the conclusion that more information does not always promote accuracy and safety during the task completion.Relevance to industryThis study presents a unique insight into the information display of in-vehicle UI design for vehicle control. The information available within an in-vehicle interface should be optimized by performance assessments to provide more useful information; this has significant positive effect on operator performance from an accuracy and safety perspective. Thus, this study provides advice for designing an in-vehicle UI.     

A fault-tolerant approach to robot teams

As the applications of mobile robotics evolve it has become increasingly less practical for researchers to design custom hardware and control systems for each problem. This paper presents a new approach to control system design in order to look beyond end-of-lifecycle performance, and consider control system structure, flexibility, and extensibility. Towards these ends the Control ad libitum philosophy was proposed, stating that to make significant progress in the real-world application of mobile robot teams the control system must be structured such that teams can be formed in real-time from diverse components. The Control ad libitum philosophy was applied to the design of the HAA (Host, Avatar, Agent) architecture: a modular hierarchical framework built with provably correct distributed algorithms. A control system for mapping, exploration, and foraging was developed using the HAA architecture and evaluated in three experiments. First, the basic functionality of the HAA architecture was studied, specifically the ability to: (a) dynamically form the control system, (b) dynamically form the robot team, (c) dynamically form the processing network, and (d) handle heterogeneous teams and allocate robots between tasks based on their capabilities. Secondly, the control system was tested with different rates of software failure and was able to successfully complete its tasks even when each module was set to fail every 0.5–1.5 min. Thirdly, the control system was subjected to concurrent software and hardware failures, and was still able to complete a foraging task in a 216 m² environment.     

A Comparative Study of Two Wayfinding Aids With Simulated Driving Tasks—GPS and a Dual-Scale Exploration Aid

Global Positioning System (GPS) is currently the most often used wayfinding aid for driving. Yet GPS is originally designed to provide a driving guide rather than to help users gain spatial knowledge. Accordingly, GPS might be less usable in situations where spatial knowledge is required. This study experimentally compared two wayfinding aids using simulated driving tasks in a virtual environment: a simulated GPS and a dual-scale exploration aid (DSEA). The DSEA, which provides two levels of details—both detailed and contextual information—was proposed to support participants in finding and selecting routes by themselves. The results show that although DSEA was less helpful in leading participants to their destination and corresponded to more turning errors in simulated driving, it was more useful for the corresponding participants to establish spatial awareness and a cognitive map. The influence of participants' spatial ability test score on wayfinding performance was measured and discussed. The proposed DSEA design and experimental results show some indications for designing new wayfinding aids aimed at reducing wayfinding errors and constructing cognitive maps while still providing easy navigation.     

Semantic models and corpora choice when using Semantic Fields to predict eye movement on web pages

Ten models are compared in their ability to predict eye-tracking data that was collected from 49 participants' goal-oriented search tasks on a total of 1809 Web pages. Forming the basis of six of these models, three semantic models and two corpus types are compared as components for the Semantic Fields model (Stone and Dennis, 2007) that estimates the semantic salience of different areas displayed on Web pages. Latent Semantic Analysis, Sparse Nonnegative Matrix Factorization, and Vectorspace were used to generate similarity comparisons of goal and Web page text in the semantic component of the Semantic Fields model. Overall, Vectorspace was the best performing semantic model in this study. Two types of corpora or knowledge-bases were used to inform the semantic models, the well known TASA corpus and other corpora that were constructed from the Wikipedia encyclopedia. In all cases the Wikipedia corpora outperformed the TASA corpora. A non-corpus-based Semantic Fields model that incorporated word overlap performed more poorly at these tasks. Three baseline models were also included as a point of comparison to evaluate the effectiveness of the Semantic Fields models. In all cases the corpus-based Semantic Fields models outperformed the baseline models when predicting the participants' eye-tracking data. Both final destination pages and pupil data (dilation) indicated that participants' were actively performing goal-oriented search tasks.     

The electronic mirror: Human-computer interaction and change in self-appraisals

As computers become increasingly powerful and complex, software designers are employing anthropomorphism to enhance the usability of computer interfaces (i.e., “user-centered” design). The potential for implementing a social mode of interface behavior, however, can only be realized through understanding the role anthropomorphism plays in modifying the behavior and perceptions of users. The present study compares human-like versus machine-like interactional styles of computer interfaces, testing hypotheses that evaluative feedback conveyed through a human-like interface will have greater impact on individuals' self-appraisals. College students received experimentally manipulated positive or negative computerized feedback in response to their performance on a purported “psychic ability” task. In general, computer feedback had considerable impact upon reflected appraisals (participants' perceptions of the computer's evaluations of their performance and ability) as well as upon their self-appraisals of performance and ability. Reflected appraisals were more influenced by computer feedback than were self-appraisals. Human-like and machine-like interface styles did not have significantly different effects.     

Knowledge processing for concurrent engineering: An evolving challenge in CIM research

As technological tasks in CIM environments become more complicated, the level of intelligence required to automate and integrate these tasks also evolves with increasing complexity. This paper classifies CIM tasks and their required intelligence into facility, data and decision levels, and discusses the automation and integration of those knowledge-intensive CIM tasks at their decision level. Since decision-level tasks are often more abstract than those at the facility and data levels, a systematic approach is necessary to build research programs for the automation of these tasks. This paper will use the decision-level task of concurrent engineering as an example to explain the five-step approach that we have adapted to form our research programs in this evolving area of CIM research. These five steps are: (1) perform analysis of the task and its needed decision-level supports, (2) conceptualize these analysis results into a concise framework, (3) propose a software paradigm for the conceptual framework, (4) identify functional requirements from this paradigm to guide software implementations, and (5) correlate implementation results to identify a fundamental technology. More specifically, the analysis of concurrent engineering tasks in CIM can be found in Section 2. Section 3 explains the conceptualization process which views decision making activities as mappings and loops between a control and performance space. In Section 4, concurrent engineering is modeled as a team problem-solving process participated in by multiple cooperating knowledge sources (MCKS) with overlapping expertise to perform those loops. Several functional requirements are identified from this MCKS model of concurrent engineering and example research activities to address these challenges are described in Section 5. The correlations in Section 6 indicate that the knowledge processing technology, evolved from applied artificial intelligence research, is a fundamental technology for building intelligent systems to support various knowledge-intensive CIM tasks at their decision level.     

移动群智感知中基于联邦学习的参与者选择机制

移动群智感知的发展使得一些任务收集的数据量过大,需要在不接收参与者原始数据的情况下评估数据质量并进行参与者选择。针对这一问题,提出一种基于联邦学习的移动群智感知参与者选择机制。考虑参与者智能终端资源水平、所处交互状态构建参与者智能终端资源评价机制,提出基于线性回归和长短期记忆网络的智能终端资源预测模型。通过预训练测试模型,评估参与者提供的数据质量,结合历史任务完成情况建立参与者信誉评价模型,实现对参与者的动态评价选择。仿真实验结果表明,所提的参与者选择机制在任务完成质量、能量消耗、通信轮数及任务完成时间等多方面体现出较好的性能。     

Wave algorithm applied to collective navigation of robotic swarms

In swarm robotics, it is necessary to develop methods and strategies that guide the collective execution of tasks by the robots. The design of such tasks can be done considering it as a collection of simpler behaviors, called subtasks. In this paper, the Wave Swarm is presented as a general strategy to manage the sequence of subtasks that compose the collective navigation, which is an important task in swarm robotics. The proposed strategy is based mainly on the execution of wave algorithms. The swarm is viewed as a distributed system, wherein the communication is achieved by message passing among robot's neighborhood. Message propagation delimits the start and end of each subtask. Simulations are performed to demonstrate that controlled navigation of robot swarms/clusters is achieved with three subtasks, which are recruitment, alignment and movement. The performance of the proposed strategy regarding the time spent in the two first subtasks is analyzed. Furthermore, the simulations of the navigation in different environments including obstacles are presented and discussed.