Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is often praised for its portability and robustness towards motion artifacts. While an increasing body of fNIRS research in real-world environments is emerging, most fNIRS studies are still conducted in laboratories, and do not incorporate larger movements performed by participants. This study extends fNIRS applications in real-world environments by conducting a single-subject observational study of a yoga practice with considerable movement (Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga) in a participant’s natural environment (their apartment). The results show differences in cognitive load (prefrontal cortex activation) when comparing technically complex postures to relatively simple ones, but also some contrasts with surprisingly little difference. This study explores the boundaries of real-world cognitive load measurements, and contributes to the empirical knowledge base of using fNIRS in realistic settings. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of fNIRS brain imaging recorded during any moving yoga practice. Future work with fNIRS should take advantage of this by accomplishing studies with considerable real-world movement.
The concept of remotely operated, unmanned, and autonomous ships is creating increasing interest in the maritime domain, promising safety, increased efficiency and sustainability. Shore control centers (SCCs) have been proposed to operate such vessels and some industry projects are initiated. This paper aims at bringing knowledge about what a SCC is envisioned to be. It identifies and explores challenges related to designing and developing SCCs through semi-structured interviews with the research community and industry. We discuss tasks, functions and interactions between human and machine.
This paper discusses how to investigate the human element in a control room setting in terms of situational settings (monitoring and active control) and mental state (workload and affect). We show an explorative experiment in a ship bridge simulator context to investigate measurement practices and uncover correlations between mental state and changes in physiology. 31 participants from an engineering student population participated in the experiment. Data were collected from two scenarios through surveys (workload and affect) and physiology sensors (electrocardiography and electrodermal activity). We highlight the following findings from our experiment: One, there is a significant difference in variables measuring mental and physiological states between two regularly occurring scenarios in the context of large ship navigation. With changes in mental and physiological states, the capacity and reaction pattern of users change, so there are different demands of the user interface and system behavior. Two, elements of mental state are correlated with changes in physiological state. Most prominently, stress and workload covary with electrodermal activity and elements of heart rate variability. This finding can support designers in evaluating different solutions by enabling them to assess changes in the mental state of users working in control rooms through physiology sensor data.
We present an experiment investigating concepts of affective state and workload in a large ship manoeuvring context. It is run on a consumer ship simulator software where student participants (N=31) perform two ecologically valid scenarios: sailing on open sea and in a harbour. Results from surveys show highly significant changes in terms of both affect and workload between the scenarios. Thus, one should consider varying affects and workloads from users in varying contexts, consequently demanding new design paradigms for product development, such as dynamically adaptive interfaces.
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