Designing dynamic distributed cooperative Human-Machine Systems

The paper presents a new approach to the development of cooperative human-machine systems in the Transportation domain which is currently researched in the European project D3CoS. A necessary precondition for the acceptance of cooperative human-machine systems with shared control is the confidence and trust of the user into the system. D3CoS tackles this important issue by addressing the cooperative system as the object and the target of the system development process. This new perspective, along with corresponding innovative methods, techniques and tools, shall allow the identification of optimal task and authority sharing approaches supported by intuitive human-machine interaction and user interfaces at an early stage of system development. This will support powerful teamwork between humans and machines or between machines and machines that is transparent, intuitive and easy to understand. The paper describes the research dimensions for the development of the methods, techniques and tools as well as first results.     

A method to investigate drivers' acceptance of Blind Spot Detection System®

Lately, with the goal of improving road safety, car makers developed and commercialised some Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) which, through the detection of blind spot areas on the vehicle's sides, could help the drivers during the overtaking and the change lane task. Despite the possible benefits to reduce lateral crashes, the overall impact on road safety of such systems have not been deeply studied yet; notably, despite some researches have been carried out, there is a lack of studies regarding the long-term usage and drivers' acceptance of those systems. In order to fill the research gap, a methodology, based on the combination of focus groups interviews, questionnaires and a small-scale field operational test (FOT), has been designed in this study; such a methodology aims at evaluating drivers' acceptance of Blind Spot Information System? and at proposing some ideas to improve the usability and user-friendliness of this (or similar) device in their future development.     

Promoting work ability and well-being in hospital nursing: the interplay of age, job control, and successful ageing strategies

Previous research shows that work ability of nurses decreases with age. In our study we therefore addressed the following questions: Do successful ageing strategies at work in terms of selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) support the work ability of nurses? Does SOC mediate the relationship between job control (i.e., decision opportunities at work) and work ability? Does the mediation differ between age-groups? 438 nurses (Age Range 21-63 years) completed a questionnaire in the course of an employee survey. Results show that SOC is positively related with work ability. The positive effect of job control on work ability is significantly mediated by SOC. There are stronger mediating effects for elder nurses than for younger nurses. Results indicate that the interplay of job control and SOC at work helps to maintain the work ability of nurses in nursing care.     

Supporting the scholar role in intensive care nursing

This study investigates how future informatics applications can support and challenge intensive care nurses (ICU nurses) to grow and learn continuously. To this end a research-and-design tool is introduced which is based on a model of the nursing process that starts from the idea that a nurse fulfills three different roles: the role of practitioner (using information immediately to base actions upon), the role of scholar (using information later on to learn from) and the role of human (coping with stress and dealing with emotions). In this paper the focus is on the scholar role. Twenty-eight intensive care staff members from six different hospitals were asked to recount an imposing experience from the perspective of each role. Regarding the scholar role, the participants mentioned 77 learning strategies they adopt for individual as well as organizational learning. Individual learning concerned reflection on former patient cases, reflection on current patient cases to anticipate a change in the patient's condition and reflection on personal behavior and decisions. Organizational learning concerned reflection on former patient cases. Examples of specific strategies were formal team evaluations focused on procedure and understanding the perspective of team members, being present at autopsies, and giving feedback on the nursing skills of colleagues. Based on these strategies design implications are defined for future nursing informatics applications, which will be presented.     

Concurrent cognitive task may improve motor work performance and reduce muscle fatigue

Performance of certain cognitive tasks either during physical load or in rest pauses between boosts might lead to slowing of muscle fatigue and fatigue related decline in performance. Seventeen right-handed healthy volunteers (age 24 ± 1.4, 8 males) participated in this study, aiming to investigate the effect of the level of the cognitive information processing - 1) passive perception of audio stimuli, 2) active stimuli discrimination, 3) active stimuli discrimination following motor response - on motor task performance (handgrip test 30% and 7% of MVC) and muscle fatigue development. Cognitive tasks show the following effects on motor work: i) Perceived fatigue during 30 % MVC (fatiguing) condition developed slower if participant pressed button in response to deviant acoustic stimuli, as compared to passive listening. Counting task, an active task without motor component, took the intermediate position and did not differ significantly from two other cognitive tasks. ii) MVC after 30% MVC (fatiguing) condition tended to decrease stronger when accompanied with passive listening in comparison with both active tasks. iii) Motor task performance during 30% MVC (fatiguing) condition was better for active cognitive task with motor component than for passive task. Active task without motor component took the intermediate position and did not differ significantly from both the other cognitive tasks.     

News coverage of child sexual abuse and prevention, 2007-2009

News media coverage of child sexual abuse can help policymakers and the public understand what must be done to prevent future abuse, but coverage tends to focus on extreme cases. This article presents an analysis of newspaper coverage from 2007 to 2009 to describe how the daily news presents and frames day-to-day stories about child sexual abuse. When child sexual abuse receives news attention, the stories focus primarily on the criminal justice details of a specific incident rather than contextual information about causes of and solutions to child sexual abuse, and prevention is rarely addressed. We offer suggestions for strategies that advocates can use to help reporters improve news coverage so that it better contextualizes child sexual abuse and links it to prevention policies.     

Manual flying skills under the influence of performance shaping factors

This paper describes an experimental study investigating pilots' manual flying skills. In today's line oriented flight training, basic flying skills are neglected frequently. So, the study examines the manual flying skills of commercial airline pilots under the influence of several performance shaping factors like training, practice or fatigue in a landing scenario. The landing phase shows a disproportionate high percentage of aircraft accidents and it is typically flown by hand. The study is to be undertaken with randomly selected pilots in a full motion flight simulator to ensure a high validity of the results.     

The relevance of temporal iconicity with instruction manuals for elderly users

Gerontolinguistic obtains a growing importance with the increase of elderly users due to Demographic Change. Since acceptance and ease of use of supportive systems for elderly, such as "E-Nursing-Assistants", are highly dependent on the age suitable design of readable instructions, an age-appropriate linguistic concept is of high value for usability. There has been only little research on the relevance of foreign words, signal words, textual arrangement, optical accentuation of key terms and temporal iconicity concerning older users. Thus, an efficient design of age suitable manual instructions within a medical context still remains to be done. The objective of this research was to evaluate the relevance of the previously mentioned factors in the context of written instructions. For this, an empirical survey was designed which was given to 45 study participants. The subjects of the experiment were given 4x3 instructions after a pretest questionnaire. The aim was to execute these instructions as correctly and quickly as possible. Furthermore the instructions were rated regarding comprehensibility with a retrospective questionnaire.     

Development of guidelines for designing appliances for older persons

The ability of older adults to use a domestic appliance depends on their comprehension of the appliance's operation. This may depend on transfer of understanding from similar, more familiar technology. While this may assist their interaction with the new device, it may constrain the discovery of new functionality not represented in the familiar technology, and, thereby, constrain the discovery of advanced functionality. Older adults experience declining cognitive abilities associated with attention, perceptual encoding, and memory (cueing and recall). Designing appliances to extend cognitive abilities provides opportunity to prolong functional independence. Concepts from cognitive psychology, human factors, and gerontology are reviewed to explain age-related behavior towards technology to support innovative product development of technologies for older adults.     

A study of the kinematics of ingress and egress of upright and recumbent seats

Research has been done on the maximum reach and ingress/egress of upright seats. However, research on recumbent seats and comparisons between recumbent and upright seats is limited. By using an eight-camera Vicon motion capture system and C-motion Visual 3D modeling software, this research compared the ingress/egress joint kinematics and maximal planar reach of an upright seat with a recumbent seat. Mean range of motion and mean peak angle for each ingress/egress task were determined and the values for the upright seat were compared to the values for the recumbent seat. For each reach task, three extreme points were extracted and compared between the upright and recumbent seat. Seat orientation was found to have a statistically significant effect on the range of motion of several joints during the ingress/egress tasks, as well as one of the extreme points during the reaching tasks.