A novel human-machine interface for working machines operation

The future of working machines winks to semi autonomy and latest technological aids to improve the quality of operations as well as the easiness of specific tasks execution. This field can take great advantage of latest human-machine interface (HMI) technologies that has been applied in the last years in field like virtual environments and robotics. The present paper discusses a novel approach for interactive operation of working machines. The approach combines traditional controls with visual/vision and haptic interactions. A wearable projection system has been introduced with the purpose of describing a wide set of localized commands recognized by the system's vision module. A preliminary setup has been developed using a simplified demonstration platform. A test session applied to a manipulation robot is presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed solutions in terms of task effectiveness, neglect tolerance, interaction effort and usability of the human-machine interface.