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This paper aims to discuss the most critical human factors and usability aspects involved in First Person View (FPV) operation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in infrastructure construction and inspection environments. The paper starts with the discussion of usability and safety issues, addressing how and to what extent FPV devices enable UAS co...
Context in source publication
Citations
... Various models and simulations have been developed and tested for qualitative and quantitative analysis of risks associated with the use of aerial robots in construction sites [247,250,251]. Flight simulators are also used to train UAV pilots for the safe usage of UAVs in construction sites and to reduce risk from the use of UAVs [252]. ...
Regular inspection and monitoring of buildings and infrastructure, that is collectively called the built environment in this paper, is critical. The built environment includes commercial and residential buildings, roads, bridges, tunnels, and pipelines. Automation and robotics can aid in reducing errors and increasing the efficiency of inspection tasks. As a result, robotic inspection and monitoring of the built environment has become a significant research topic in recent years. This review paper presents an in-depth qualitative content analysis of 269 papers on the use of robots for the inspection and monitoring of buildings and infrastructure. The review found nine different types of robotic systems, with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) being the most common, followed by unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). The study also found five different applications of robots in inspection and monitoring, namely, maintenance inspection, construction quality inspection, construction progress monitoring, as-built modeling, and safety inspection. Common research areas investigated by researchers include autonomous navigation, knowledge extraction, motion control systems, sensing, multi-robot collaboration, safety implications, and data transmission. The findings of this study provide insight into the recent research and developments in the field of robotic inspection and monitoring of the built environment and will benefit researchers, and construction and facility managers, in developing and implementing new robotic solutions.
... The implementation of such technologies is expected to be more accurate, reliable, and time efficient [13][14][15]. However, as highlighted by several studies [16][17][18][19][20], the use of new technologies can have both positive and negative effects on employee health and well-being [21,22]. Unfortunately, many organizations are hesitant to evaluate how a new technology will affect the employees who will use it. ...
... Usability is a critical feature of highly interactive systems that includes efficiency, effectiveness, and user satisfaction [25]. When a new inspection technology was introduced by Netland et al. [26] and Daniel et al. [16] studies, usability was tested as a critical part of each project and defined as the operators' ability to use a system. Workload, like usability, is a widely used concept in ergonomics and human factors, and is defined as the inspector's perception of the complexity and dif-ficulty of tasks being performed [27]. ...
Background:
Workplace inspections are applied to facilitate the adherence to the occupational health and safety regulations. The Iranian Ministry of Health introduced a new software system for tablets to inspect workplaces.
Objectives:
The aim of this study was to take measurements of the usability, mental workload, and mood of inspectors.
Methods:
Inspectors used both pen-and-paper and tablet methods to inspect the automotive industry in a mixed-method procedure. The NASA-TLX score, QUIS score, I-PANAS (SF) situation, inspection time, and number of errors were collected throughout the procedure. The differences were investigated using a paired sample and the Wilcoxon signed ranks test.
Results:
In terms of efficacy, using the tablet resulted in lower error rates, but it took longer to complete the inspection task (P < 0.001). Participants perceived a lower workload when inspecting with a tablet rather than the traditional method. (Mental Demand: p < 0.002, Performance: p < 0.009, Effort: p < 0.012, TLX: p < 0.002 based on various subcomponents of NASA-TLX). The newly introduced system's usability was insufficient.
Conclusion:
Although the use of tablets has improved safety inspections, ergonomic redesign of the system and consideration of a user-centered approach, as well as inspector training, can make the system more likely to succeed.
... For data processing, the ability to create a data set (Yin et al. 2020) and generate a feasible model (Tong et al. 2020) are the important skills that could influence the level of uncertainty. In addition to skill and experience, factors of cognitive performance, which are the mental process involved in situational awareness (Albanese et al. 2017;HekmatiAthar et al. 2020;Kim and Irizarry 2019;Paes et al. 2017) and cognitive capabilities (Albanese et al. 2017;Chen et al. 2018;Kim and Irizarry 2019;Sun et al. 2020a), are also important components influencing activity and decision-making. Specifically, previous studies mainly considered or mentioned the level of comfort (Xu and Turkan 2019), attention (Agnisarman et al. 2019;Paes et al. 2017), psychological condition (Chen et al. 2018;Kim and Irizarry 2019;Zhang et al. 2016), mental fatigue (Boksem et al. 2005;Sousa et al. 2014) and workload (Sun et al. 2020a), and understanding (Agnisarman et al. 2019). ...
... In addition to skill and experience, factors of cognitive performance, which are the mental process involved in situational awareness (Albanese et al. 2017;HekmatiAthar et al. 2020;Kim and Irizarry 2019;Paes et al. 2017) and cognitive capabilities (Albanese et al. 2017;Chen et al. 2018;Kim and Irizarry 2019;Sun et al. 2020a), are also important components influencing activity and decision-making. Specifically, previous studies mainly considered or mentioned the level of comfort (Xu and Turkan 2019), attention (Agnisarman et al. 2019;Paes et al. 2017), psychological condition (Chen et al. 2018;Kim and Irizarry 2019;Zhang et al. 2016), mental fatigue (Boksem et al. 2005;Sousa et al. 2014) and workload (Sun et al. 2020a), and understanding (Agnisarman et al. 2019). For a group of participants, some researchers investigated the organization settings such as team composition and organization climate Zhang et al. 2016), and some others also surveyed uniformity among members, such as shared understanding and uniformity on skills or criteria (Agnisarman et al. 2019;Murphy et al. 2011;Zhang et al. 2016). ...
Given that traditional façade visual inspection entails laborious, dangerous, and inefficient manual work, automation-enabled façade visual inspection has become a prevailing trend in both academia and industry. However, automation-enabled applications often encounter uncertainty problems. For automation-enabled façade visual inspection, uncertainty in reliability and efficiency is an important factor that determines the value of introducing automation to façade visual inspection. During automation-enabled façade visual inspection, human efforts play important roles throughout the whole process and compose a human-cyber-physical system. Therefore, human-related activities and human factors are prominent causes of uncertainty in automation-enabled façade visual inspection. To understand human-related uncertainty, this work designed a Delphi study with an expert panel to quantitatively evaluate human-related activities and human factors. Also, an optimized fuzzy Delphi method was adopted to process the collected evaluation opinions. Based on the results, the most critical activities and human factors influencing uncertainty were extracted. Additionally, a structure of uncertainty generation was developed to analyze the evaluation results and provide recommendations for uncertainty control. This research contributes to facilitating understanding of the uncertainty problem in human-cyber-physical systems and to providing effective recommendations for uncertainty control in automation-enabled façade visual inspection.
... Heuristics evaluations are inspection-based methods that predict usability flaws without the need of user testing (Nielsen and Molich, 1990). This method has proven to be an effective tool in human-computer interaction research in general, but especially when the goal is to verify the impacts of a given information technology on user task performance (Dix et al., 2004;Irizarry et al., 2012;Paes et al., 2017b). In this case, the heuristics evaluation works as a checklist of important points that must be reviewed by expert users. ...
A good level of understanding of design specifications by all stakeholders is the initial and a fundamental step towards effective communication in a design review setting. Certainly, one of the goals of designers during the review process is to ensure the design solutions are well understood. Recently, virtual reality (VR) systems have been adopted in an effort to improve this shared understanding of ongoing designs. However, the effectiveness and suitability of such systems to design review practices has not been rigorously tested yet. In this context, this paper describes a systematic usability study consisting of a mix of empirical and inspection-based methods (user testing and heuristics evaluation) that aimed to investigate the implications and usability issues from the adoption of an immersive virtual reality system in design review. The usability testing comprised the evaluation of three main aspects from the user standpoint: users' cognitive performance, users' interaction performance, and the system suitability to design review practices. The experiment consisted of expert designers performing tasks within the virtual environment and then responding to objective and subjective questions about their understanding of the virtual representation, their overall experience using the platform, and their personal assessment on heuristics regarding the system's user interface. The usability evaluation provided evidence that the immersive virtual reality system is indeed efficient in communicating design solutions, which could improve communication quality during design review meetings. However, the heuristics evaluation (alone) revealed that the system has significant usability flaws and still requires improvements in its user interface. Nevertheless, since issues were rated as "minor usability problems," improvements to the system are very likely. In light of the evaluation findings, the last part of this article discusses the extent to which the immersive virtual reality system could benefit the decision-making in design review, and provides some insights on potential improvements.
The Operation and Maintenance (O&M) phase can account for as much as 80% of the overall lifecycle cost of a project. The inputs from O&M practitioners are often not incorporated during the design phase leading to maintainability issues during the O&M phase, which results in significant costs and hinders building performance. Traditionally, design communication with practitioners is conducted using 2D drawings and in some more advanced projects, with Building Information Models (BIMs). Virtual Reality (VR) has the potential to facilitate maintainability-focused design input from O&M practitioners, but this application has not been studied in detail. This paper addresses the gap by examining the usability of VR for providing access-related maintainability inputs. A quasi-experimental approach was adopted to evaluate the difference in access-related inputs provided by sixteen O&M practitioners, once using 2D drawings and BIM and again using VR. We assessed the variation in time for O&M practitioners to provide the inputs and the perceived quality of the inputs using the two design communication methods. We also examined the effect of practitioners' years of experience on providing access-related maintainability inputs using VR. The results suggest that there was no statistically significant difference in the access-related maintainability inputs provided using the two design communication methods, which demonstrates that O&M practitioners could provide similar access-related inputs using VR and traditional means of communication using 2D drawings and 3D models. The results also show that O&M practitioners were able to provide inputs significantly faster using VR. The O&M practitioners also reported that VR facilitated ease of use and high confidence in their inputs. Furthermore, the practitioners' years of experience did not lead to any variation in the access-related inputs provided and the time efficiency of providing the inputs. While the small sample size limits the generalizability of the results, the study acts as a proof of concept on the usability of VR for improving O&M practitioner input on the maintainability of building designs.
