Designing and Evaluating Control Modes for a Wearable Workspace, 07-R9758

Principal Investigator
Warren C. Couvillion

Inclusive Dates:  10/07/07 – 03/01/09

Background - This research project addresses the problem of information access and usability in industrial and other workplaces, in which up to 50 percent of working hours are spent searching for information. The project is especially concerned with accessing information in restricted physical spaces where bulky paper manuals or monitors may be difficult to access. Fortunately, a constellation of new technologies has now made possible a practical and relatively inexpensive means of designing a truly portable electronic workspace with easily accessible information in a wide range of work environments.

Approach - SwRI researchers developed the "Wearable Workspace," a device for displaying text and diagrams to the user via a head-mounted display (HMD). With the Wearable Workspace, a user can navigate through information without using his or her hands. By attaching a noise-canceling microphone and an orientation sensor to the HMD and interpreting these inputs on a wearable, ultra-mobile personal computer (UMPC), the user can control the display of technical data via voice commands and head motions. To evaluate the Wearable Workspace, SwRI performed a user study to determine if the device improved technicians' abilities to perform certain tasks.

Accomplishments - A prototype wearable workspace device was built using commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and a mixture of COTS and custom software, as shown in the illustration. The software consists of a suite of applications to detect phrases spoken by the user and particular head motions, and translates them into mouse and keyboard messages understood by the UMPC's operating system. This allows the user to control the display of information without using his hands.

A research protocol to test the efficacy of the Wearable Workspace was developed and evaluated. It was determined that the technicians found the Wearable Workspace easy to use and improved their access to information. Voice control was the preferred mode of operation.

Figure 1. Wearable Workspace Prototype.

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