This paper designs a plastic blow molding machine monitor system which takes ARM7 embedded processor as core and takes CAN bus as communication system. By analyzing the Human-machine interface system requirements, hardware use LCD screen, touch screen and keyboard as man-machine interface display and input device, use the LPC2478 with ARM7 microprocessor, large capacity memory and CAN communications interface circuits as man-machine interface control device. In software design, firstly μC/OS-II embedded operating system is transplanted to the ARM core to achieve real-time multi-task switching. Secondly μC/GUI is transplanted to display graphics and text. Write man-machine interface application program task-units. Finally LPC2478 connects with CAN bus controller CTM8251T to achieve communication between the modules. The injection blow molding machine embedded human-machine interface is completed. View full abstract»

Due to the incompleteness and complexity of the evaluation information in the human-machine interface evaluation, it is difficult to evaluate the human-machine interface with the traditional evaluation methods. In order to overcome these problems, grey interval relation membership degree is applied in the field of human-machine interface evaluation in this paper. The concept of membership degree is imported and integrated with grey relation analysis in the method. By comparing the relation membership degree between the design schemes and the reference schemes, including the ideal scheme and the negative ideal scheme, the optimal scheme can be found. Based on the proposed method, a novel evaluation model of human-machine interface is set up and applied in the evaluation on computer monitoring and controlling interface of nuclear power plant. Results of the evaluation example prove that the proposed method for human-machine interface evaluation is reasonable and feasible. View full abstract»

This paper recapitulated the concept of human machine interface visualization design, analyzed and generalized its study contents and the attention-deserving problems relating to human machine interface visualization design. It summarized the attribute of visualizable human machine interface under the consideration of the visualization study content. Finally, the paper advanced some principles which should be observed in visualization design, providing the visualization design of human machine interface some bases. View full abstract»

In May 1993, the TRON Electronic Equipment Human-Machine Interface (IIMI) Research Group prepared a set of guidelines called the TRON Human-Machine Interface Specifications. These guidelines are an outcome of the Group's efforts that were made for ideal human-machine interfaces. In the area of human-machine interfaces, many studies (for example, those on legible screens, easy-to-use keyboards, etc.) have been conducted and reported. However, many experiments with different interfaces are still used in homes and offices, so users make extra efforts to operate such equipments because of the diversified operating display methods. The purpose of the guidelines (TRON Human-Machine Interface Specifications) is to ease and standardize the operations of home-use electronic equipments View full abstract»

This paper presents an approach to human-machine interface design for control room operators of nuclear power plants. The first step in designing an interface for a particular application is to determine information content that needs to be displayed. The design methodology for this step is called the interface design framework (called framework ). Several frameworks have been proposed for applications at varying levels, including process plants. However, none is based on the design and manufacture of a plant system for which the interface is designed. This paper presents an interface design framework which originates from design theory and methodology for general technical systems. Specifically, the framework is based on a set of core concepts of a function-behavior-state model originally proposed by the artificial intelligence research community and widely applied in the design research community. Benefits of this new framework include the provision of a model-based fault diagnosis facility, and the seamless integration of the design (manufacture, maintenance) of plants and the design of human-machine interfaces. The missing linkage between design and operation of a plant was one of the causes of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor incident. A simulated plant system is presented to explain how to apply this framework in designing an interface. The resulting human-machine interface is discussed; specifically, several fault diagnosis examples are elaborated to demonstrate how this interface could support operators' fault diagnosis in an unanticipated situation. View full abstract»

Lack of information about the automatic system's activity has been suggested to markedly decrease the effectiveness of operator-automation interaction. The Human-Centered Automation Program at the OECD Halden Reactor Project performed two closely related experiments to examine how operators handled two types of automation malfunctions when working from two types of human-machine interfaces: one providing explicit information about the automatic system's activity using graphical and verbal feedback, and one providing only implicit information. The experiments were performed in a full-scale nuclear power plant simulator using licensed operators as subjects. The first experiment demonstrated no clear effect on joint-system performance effectiveness of the human-machine interface manipulation, but pointed to the need for specific changes in the human-machine interface design. The second experiment demonstrated a clear effect on joint-system performance effectiveness of the human-machine interface. Based on the experimental results, a set of recommendations for the design of explicit feedback on the automatic system's activity is suggested. View full abstract»

Multi-axis and multi-task machine tools have been the major development trends in recent machine tool industry. However, it is almost impossible To achieve efficient production and safety on multi-axis, multi-task machines tools without the help of on-line software systems, which is also known as the Human-machine interface (HMI). The biggest challenge for Taiwan machine tool industry to build HMI software is to deal with the complexity induced by programming interfaces and communication protocols provided by various commercial CNC controllers since it is common for a vendor to sell machine tools with the same configuration but with different controller to fulfill customer requirements. Various combinations of machine configurations and CNC controllers will dramatically increase the development and maintenance cost for HMI software development. To resolve the above difficulty, a Common Human-machine Interface (CHMI) software development platform is proposed and implemented as a unified development environment for customized HMI software. To demonstrate the benefits of the proposed CHMI platform, on-line collision avoidance and machining simulation software are also implemented based on the CHMI platform and tested with various machine tools. Implementation and test result shows that using the CHMI platform, vendors can develop customized HMI software without the complexities induced by various programming interfaces and communication protocols provided by various commercial CNC controllers, therefore the development and maintenance cost can be reduced. View full abstract»

There are many input modalities for human-machine interface (HMI). Brain-signal that is one of biosignal has been studied as an input modality for HMI. Brain-signal based HMI can help disabled people to communicate with a machine using the brain's electrical activity. this study is focuses on usability of the EEG-based HMI's for available tools in real life and possibility of the EEG signal as input modality of multimodal interface. This study attempt to explore the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal measurement and analysis methods related to concentration for multimodal Interface. The experiments have been performed with various tasks, such as self-concentration, self-arithmetic (non-display), self-arithmetic (show display) and eye-closing. EEG signals are recorded while subjects perform each task on Fz, Cz, Pz. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis is to determine the threshold on each task. Rate of distinction range is 50.32% ~ 56.77% with the threshold about self-arithmetic and 71.67%~78.33% with the threshold about eye-closing. There are some meaningful results about threshold, self-arithmetic and eye-close activity. It can be used for brain-machine interface and multi-modal interface. View full abstract»

Teleoperation is a viable alternative to project a human operator's intelligence into the places that are inaccessible or dangerous to people, or where expertise and resources are not available. Due to the distance between the human operator and remote environment, the human-machine interface is an important component for the overall system performance capabilities and efficiency. The paper proposes a new design method of multimodal interface for teleoperation. A distributed graphic predictive display subsystem based on virtual reality is implemented, and all kinds of feedback information acquired from a remote environment, such as actual live images, audio and force information are organized and presented to human operators in an appropriate, way. Experimental results demonstrate that the multimodal human-machine interface can reduce a human operator's mental workload and facilitate teleoperation. Some key technologies concerned with this multimodal interface, such as the synchronization mechanism of the distributed predictive simulation subsystem and the real time transmission of actual live multimedia via the Internet under narrow bandwidth are also developed View full abstract»

On the base of consciousness, the esthetic sense and the language function of shape, which had been obtained by human's observation and the experience, a study was given to understand how does the shape play a leading role to benefit man-machine communication and expression of esthetic image in the availability design of Human-Machine interface, When the integrant parts of shape contributed to understand the function, operation, security, psychology joyful and so on aspects of the human-machine interface, the specified goals of with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction can be achieved in availability design to meet the people's needs of security, amenity and pleasure. Then it pointed out that, in surface design, how to play the leading role of shape to realize and enhance the actual effect of availability design. View full abstract»

Considering the great change on human machine interface between the Control-by-Wire vehicle and traditional ones, this paper tries to analysis and adjust the key characteristics of human-vehicle, such as the H-point, eye ellipse, head enveloping line and accessible area and then construct the human characteristics database focusing on the Control-by-Wire vehicle control system. This paper also realizes the new interface layout and verification of Control-by-Wire vehicle by taking of the different parameters of human characteristics, which can provide the effective methods of interior layout and measurements in the process of conceptual design. View full abstract»

Design, development and implementation of advanced technological systems is the challenging business experienced by industry engineers in every day professional life. The increased complexity of such systems and the huge amount of information to be managed makes the challenge even more hard. The new European Air Traffic Management System under development in the framework of the SESAR Programme represents one of these complex system of systems where a number of different stakeholders distributed worldwide are required to interact with. A primary actor taking safety-critical decision in the ATM is the Air Traffic Controller. Thus, the availability of timely and clear information allowing the Human to take the best decision any time in any condition is vital. That means, in turn, the Human Machine Interface (HMI) of the Air Traffic Controller Working Position (ATCo CWP) plays a very essential and strategic role. The paper intends to explain how SESAR project P05.09 “Usability Requirements and Human Factors Issues for the Controller Working Position” is going to address the requirements definition process and planning pre-operational validation activity for the SESAR CWP HMI. View full abstract»

The paper presents a electromyography (EMG) acquisition system of human-machine interface. After being transferred through amplifier and AD converter, The EMG signal then goes into feature extraction and classification procedures. finally, gesture recognition is completed and corresponding commands are output to control peripherals. The system, which is based on DSP TMS320F2812, utilize the chip's rich peripheral and outstanding capability of digital signal processing to complete the work of EMG information acquisition, processing, feature extraction and IO port control. A EMG amplifier and DSP development board were designed in system for hardware, also, DSP algorithm was designed to process EMG information and control IO port. thus a man-machine interface based on embedded technology and miniaturization was built. View full abstract»

We introduce an unobtrusive sensor-based control system for human-machine interface to control robotic and rehabilitative devices. The interface is capable of directing assistive robotic devices in response to tongue movement and/or speech without insertion of any device in the vicinity of the oral cavity. The interface is centered on the unique properties of the human ear as an acoustic output device. Our work has shown that various movements within the oral cavity create unique, traceable pressure changes in the human ear, which can be measured with a simple sensor (such as a microphone) and analysed to produce commands signals, which can in turn be used to control robotic devices. In this work, we present: 1) an analysis of the sensitivity of human ear canals as acoustic output device, 2) the design of a new sensor for monitoring airflow in the aural canal, 3) pattern recognition procedures for recognition of both speech and tongue movement by monitoring aural flow across several human test subjects, and 4) a conceptual design and simulation of the machine interface system View full abstract»

Several studies on the human-machine interface (HMI) have progressed to decrease the human load on process plant operation. Among these studies, interface agents, which mediate between plant operators and process plants, are illuminated. On the other hand, information display systems have been studied and plant status representation using computer generated imagery (CGI) have been attempted. We report on a novel human-machine interface in plant operation composed of Interface Agent (IA) and Virtual Plant Agent (VPA). The IA monitors data of a process plant, communicates plant information to operators in voice and receives verbal operation commands from operators. We described the notion of an interface agent for plant operation and introduced a case based realization. The VPA was constructed by arranging all plant components which were modeled using CGI technology as in a real process plant. The VPA was linked to the IA through a local area network so that an operator was allowed to instruct the VPA to show plant status on the virtual space by Japanese voice commands. The VPA was enabled to display plant information such as modeled plant components, Japanese messages from the IA, literal expression of sensor data, abnormal indication by CGI with voice annunciation, visualized images for each component status, and real images from industrial TV at observation points. Furthermore, direct manipulation functionality for plant operation was also provided to the VPA. By connecting the IA and VPA to a simulator of an oil refinery plant, the demonstration has proved that the new HMI was useful to operate the plant View full abstract»

The real-time adaptation between human and assistive devices can improve the quality of life for amputees, which, however, may be difficult to achieve since physical and mental states vary over time. This paper presents a co-adaptive human-machine interface (HMI) that is developed to control virtual forearm prosthesis over a long period of operation. Direct physical performance measures for the requested tasks are calculated. Bioelectric signals are recorded using one pair of electrodes placed on the frontal face region of a user to extract the mental (affective) measures (the entropy of the alpha band of the forehead electroencephalography signals) while performing the tasks. By developing an effective algorithm, the proposed HMI can adapt itself to the mental states of a user, thus improving its usability. The quantitative results from 16 users (including an amputee) show that the proposed HMI achieved better physical performance measures in comparison with the traditional (nonadaptive) interface (p-value<;0.001). Furthermore, there is a high correlation (correlation coefficient <; 0.9, p-value <; .01) between the physical performance measures and self-report feedbacks based on the NASA TLX questionnaire. As a result, the proposed adaptive HMI outperformed a traditional HMI. View full abstract»

The need of in-vehicle information system was analyzed. The paper summarizes principles, existent design standards and guidelines for human machine interface of in-vehicle information system. We comply with traffic safety-oriented and user-centered design concepts. Basing on existent design standards and guidelines, we design human machine interface of in-vehicle information system. Design contents consist of visual display, auditory display, and input control. From the perspective of traffic safety, we should relieve interruption of driving task as possible as we can. Meanwhile, we should complete the interaction with in-vehicle information system. The total design principle is to keep the drivers' two hands on the steering wheel, and minimize the interaction time of visual manipulation, auditory manipulation. Different drivers have different physiology-psychology characteristic, so design requires human factors engineering knowledge. View full abstract»

The technology of Human Machine Interface (HMI) mainly investigate about how to use machines in a more humanized way so that the communication between human and the machine could become more harmonic and natural. Previous studies indicate that there is an integration area in the human brain for audiovisual information processing. Although machines also possess mechanism for audiovisual processing, there is shortage of audiovisual information integration. And to solve this issue, the prerequisite is to make clear what kinds of cognitive processing characteristics do humans have. In this current Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) study, we adopted a left-and-right-separated sensory modality method to investigate the characteristics of human audiovisual information processing. The results showed that the main audiovisual interactions were found in frontal-central scalp sites around 80-100ms during the early stage and 280-300ms during the later stage of processing. This study provides foundation for understanding the information processing characteristic of human cognitive system and for the future machine humanization. View full abstract»

This paper describes the developmental study of HMI (human-machine interface) for a user-friendly automatic control system for the ESR process running in Changwon Specialty Steel in South Korea. ESR is a second-phase refining process, commonly applied to production of high purity specialty steel like high-speed tool steels. Because the current ESR system is fully manually operated for five hours, (1) the working condition is very hard, (2) the product quality varies according to time, product and worker, and (3) there is no standard control scheme especially in the transient stage of the start up and the ending hot top phases. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to develop a user-friendly automatic control system with human machine interface for unmanned operation. For this purpose, a melt rate measurement system is developed; real process variables are measured and analyzed; a standard control scheme is developed utilizing the expertise of experienced workers; a human machine interface system is developed utilizing graphical user interface; H/W and S/W is developed for integrated process control; and finally based upon a series of experiments the results are discussed. With this enhanced system, the workers can standardize their individual work knowledge and reach the optimum control pattern of their own as their work experiences accumulate. View full abstract»

This paper presents the design of an adaptable Human-Machine Interface (HMI) for controlling virtual forearm prosthesis. Direct physical performance measures (obtained score and completion time) for the requested tasks were calculated. Furthermore, bioelectric signals from the forehead were recorded using one pair of electrodes placed on the frontal region of the subject head to extract the mental (affective) measures while performing the tasks. By employing the proposed algorithm and above measures, the proposed HMI can adapt itself to the subject's mental states, thus improving the usability of the interface. The quantitative results from 15 subjects show that the proposed HMI achieved better physical performance measures in comparison to a conventional non-adaptive myoelectric controller (p <; 0.001). View full abstract»

For semi-autonomous human-machine system, because all possible events that might happen during the expected lifetime of the system operation usually could not be predicted in the design phase, it is very important to dermine what human to does and what e fore machine to does. This paper presents a theoretical framework for ecological function allocation by "who does what and when and how to does" considerations during the design process of human-machine interface for some mobile machines. The primary objective is to explore ergonomics principals that will be able to apply into human-machine interface design for advanced vehicle, it is expecting to address the impact of driver interfaces layouts, traffic information types, and driving behavioral factors on the advanced vehicles design and development. View full abstract»

Performance evaluation of cannon human-machine interface is the key step during development and use of cannon. The establishment of performance evaluation indicators system is important to ensure scientific and rational performance evaluation. Considering the features of cannon human-machine interface, this paper analyzed the factors that impacted the interactive effectiveness, and then established the evaluation indicators system and the evaluation model. Through analysis and comparison, the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method was chosen to be the evaluation method, and its specific steps were shown. In addition, take one type cannon human-machine interface as an example to evaluate. The evaluated results were back to the designers so as to be the reference of improving interface. The evaluation indicators system can also be applied to other weapons system evaluation. View full abstract»

This paper presents an electromyographic-based human-machine interface for the agonist-antagonist system with two pairs of pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) that replicates the human elbow-joint system. We introduce the novel concepts of agonist-antagonist muscle-pair ratio (A-A ratio) and agonist-antagonist muscle-pair activity (A-A activity) to link the human muscle system to the PAM system, and we propose a linear control method translating the equilibrium point of human muscle system into that of PAM system. The human-robot experiment demonstrates the validity of the proposed method. View full abstract»

The authors introduce a `face' interface which is a user-friendly human-machine interface with multi-media and can realize a face-to-face communication environment between the operator and the machine. In this system, a human face appears on the display of the machine and it can talk to the operator with a natural voice. This paper describes the face motion and expression synthesis schemes which can be applied to this `face' interface. The authors express a human head with a 3D model. The surface model is built by texture mapping with a 2D real image. All the motions and expressions are synthesized and controlled automatically by the movement of some feature points on the model. This `face' interface is one of the applications of the model based image coding and media conversion schemes View full abstract»

This paper describes a robot-assisted endoscopic surgery system. The surgeon who stays outside the operating room controls the robot in master-slave way to accomplish the surgery. Thus, the performance of the human-machine interface between the surgical robot and the surgeon is very important for the quality of the surgery. According to the characteristics of the endoscopic surgery, we adopted commercially available, standard joystick as the candidate human-machine interactive device (HMID) of this robot-assisted surgery system. After comparing the joystick to the previous HMID (keyboard) in four different control modes, joystick-position mode was selected as the best human-machine interface of our system. In the implementation of this master-slave control, safety consideration was highlighted because of its importance. The human model experiment shows this system's advantages and disadvantages to the original direct surgery. Additionally, a method is proposed to easily achieve the balance between real-time performance and system stability. View full abstract»