The assessment of military camouflage is a key consideration in the modern military field. Traditionally, the assessment relies on traditional human visual detection tests because a large scale multi‐level and multi‐factor experiments are time‐ and resource‐consuming. One aspect of camouflage assessment, to which this current study pertains, entails improving upon or “enhancing” an existing or “selected” design. The current study presents a new and practical approach for enhancing the selected military camouflage by utilizing response surface methodology (RSM) of %L*, %a*, and %b* in CIELAB color space. Ten participants were recruited to evaluate 35 variations of %L*, %a*, and %b* on camouflage similarity index (CSI) and reaction time (RT). Based on RSM, the optimum combination occurs at L*: 61.4966, a*: −5.6505, and b*: 10.5114. In addition, a predictive algorithm to calculate the optimum shift of %L*, %a*, and %b* from the original camouflage to the improved camouflage derived from RSM is also proposed. The optimum shift occurs at −25%L*, −55%a*, and + 80%b*. In the end, a new design guideline is proposed for the enhancement of selected military camouflage, which adopts the present study's research findings.

In this paper, authors systematically selected and reviewed articles related to stereoscopic displays and their advances, with a special focus on perception, interaction, and corresponding challenges. The aim was to understand interaction‐related problems, provide possible explanations, and identify factors that limit their applications. Despite promising advancements, there are still issues that researchers in the field fail to explain precisely. The two major problems in stereoscopic viewing are, compared with the real world, objects are perceived to be smaller than they actually are and there are discomfort and visual syndromes. Furthermore, there is general agreement that humans underestimate their egocentric distance in a virtual environment (VE). Our analysis revealed that in the real world, distance estimation is about 94% accurate, but in VE, it is only about 80% accurate. This problem could reduce the efficacy of different sensory motor‐based applications where interaction is important. Experts from human factors, computing, psychology, and others have studied contributing factors such as types of perception/response method, quality of graphics, associated stereoscopic conditions, experience in virtual reality (VR), and distance signals. This paper discusses the factors requiring further investigation if the VR interaction is to be seamlessly realized. In addition, engineering research directions aiming at improving current interaction performances are recommended.

To achieve sustainability, the circular economy (CE) concept is challenging traditional linear enterprise models due to the need to manage geographically distributed product life cycle and value chains. Concurrently, Industry 4.0 is being used to bring productivity to higher levels by reducing waste and improving the efficiency of production processes via more precise real-time planning. There is significant potential to combine these two frameworks to enhance the sustainability of manufacturing sectors. This paper discusses the fundamental concepts of Industry 4.0 and explores the influential factors of Industry 4.0 that accelerate the sharing economy in the CE context via a case of electric scooters in Taiwan. The result shows Industry 4.0 can provide an enabling framework for the sharing economy in CE implementation.

This study investigates the performance of a touch screen, mouse and trackball in a motion environment. A Stewart motion platform was used to generate a six-degree-of-freedom motion environment. Participants were placed in an environment where vehicle vibration was simulated. Tasks were used according to Fitts' Law to obtain the movement time, error rate, index of performance and throughput of each input device. The results showed that during static conditions, the touch screen gave the best results. However, in the vibration environment, the mouse gave the best results. The trackball is the worst of the three. The error rate and end-point variation tends to increase for the touch screen in the vibration environment. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: This study investigates the performance of a pointing device in a vibration environment. The results showed that during static conditions, the touch screen gave the best results. However, in the vibration environment, the mouse gave the best results. The track ball is the worst of the three. This research achievement can help human-computer interaction design in various dynamic environments such as in sea and land vehicles.

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of direction of exertion (DOE) (pushing, pulling), path (walking in a straight line, turning left, walking uphill), and load placement (LP) (the 18 blocks were indicated by X, Y and Z axis; there were 3 levels on the X axis, 2 levels on the Y axis, and 3 levels on the Z axis) on muscle activity and ratings of perceived exertion in nursing cart pushing and pulling tasks. Ten participants who were female students and not experienced nurses were recruited to participate in the experiment. Each participant performed 108 experimental trials in the study, consisting of 2 directions of exertion (push and pull), 3 paths, and 18 load placements (indicated by X, Y and Z axes). A 23kg load was placed into one load placement. The dependent variables were electromyographic (EMG) data of four muscles collected bilaterally as follows: Left (L) and right (R) trapezius (TR), flexor digitorum superficialis (FDS), extensor digitorum (ED), and erector spinae (ES) and subjective ratings of perceived exertion (RPE). Split-split-plot ANOVA was conducted to analyze significant differences between DOE, path, and LP in the EMG and RPE data. Pulling cart tasks produced a significantly higher activation of the muscles (RTR:54.4%, LTR:50.3%, LFDS:57.0%, LED:63.4%, RES:40.7%, LES:36.7%) than pushing cart tasks (RTR:42.4%, LTR:35.1%, LFDS:32.3%, LED:55.1%, RES:33.3%, LES:32.1%). A significantly greater perceived exertion was found in pulling cart tasks than pushing cart tasks. Significantly higher activation of all muscles and perceived exertion were observed for walking uphill than walking in a straight line and turning left. Significantly lower muscle activity of all muscles and subject ratings were observed for the central position on the X axis, the bottom position on the Y axis, and the posterior position on the Z axis. These findings suggest that nursing staff should adopt forward pushing when moving a nursing cart, instead of backward pulling, and that uphill paths should be avoided in the design of work environments. In terms of distribution of the load in a nursing cart, heavier materials should be positioned at bottom of the cabinet, centered on the horizontal plane and close to the handle, to reduce the physical load of the nursing staff.

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In this paper, we consider secure transmissions in ergodic Rayleigh fast-faded multiple-input multiple-output multiple-antenna-eavesdropper (MIMOME) wiretap channels with only statistical channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). When the antennas at the legitimate receiver are more than (or equal to) those at the eavesdropper, we prove the first MIMOME secrecy capacity with partial CSIT by establishing a new secrecy capacity upper-bound. The key step is to form an MIMOME degraded channel by dividing the legitimate receiver's channel matrix into two submatrices, and setting one of the submatrices to be the same as the eavesdropper's channel matrix. Next, under the total power constraint over all transmit antennas, we analytically solve the channel-input covariance matrix optimization problem to fully characterize the MIMOME secrecy capacity. Typically, the MIMOME optimization problems are non-concave. However, thanks to the proposed degraded channel, we can transform the stochastic MIMOME optimization problem to be a Schur-concave one and then find its solution. Besides total power constraint, we also investigate the secrecy capacity when the transmitter is subject to the practical per-antenna power constraint. The corresponding optimization problem is even more difficult since it is not Schur-concave. Under the two power constraints considered, the corresponding MIMOME secrecy capacities can both scale with the signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) when the difference between numbers of antennas at legitimate receiver and eavesdropper are large enough. However, when the legitimate receiver and eavesdropper have a single antenna each, such SNR scalings do not exist for both cases.