These results suggest that advanced surgical robots should have intelligent re-indexing strategies. Alternatively, the robot's control gain should adaptively change with respect to hand position to normalize a surgeon's performance throughout his/her working volume.
Using two camera views helps both surgeons and lay persons perform complex tasks with fewer errors. These results may be due to better awareness of the surgical field with regard to the location of the instruments, leading to better field orientation. This display setup has potential for use in complex minimally invasive surgeries such as esophagectomy and gastric bypass. This technique also would be applicable to open microsurgery.
This paper presents an ergonomic application of a popular decision-making framework, the Analytic Hierarchy Process, in the context of an input-device selection decision. The literature is reviewed with respect to the use of the Analytic Hierarchy Process in human factors and systems engineering contexts. A case-study example is provided demonstrating the use of the Analytic Hierarchy Process methodology in the systems engineering task of selecting among commercial off-the-shelf alternatives, taking into account human factors engineering considerations. The strengths and weaknesses of the methodology are discussed, and conclusions for the applicability of the method for human-centered systems development are provided.
Space exploration is a demanding endeavor, filled with extremely demanding tasks for both astronauts and ground personnel, making it a natural application area for Human Factors Engineering (HFE). This paper describes on ongoing project to develop and deliver hands-on HFE activities that expose middle-school age students to concepts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) areas, while leveraging the backdrop of space exploration to make the activities fun and exciting. This pilot activity focused on a well-known HFE result known as “Fitts' Law”, a function describing aimed movement time as a function of task variables. The activity included introduction to HFE, description of Fitts' Law, experimental data collection and graphing, and a design component relevant to Fitts' Law (i.e., emergency button placement on a control panel). Initial offerings of this activity indicate high potential for success and broad impact.
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