MASc seminar - Mortaja Alqassab

Candidate

Mortaja Alqassab

Title

Human Performance and Cognitive Workload in Haptic, Audio and Visual Environments

Supervisor

David Wang

Abstract

The ability for the Internet and dedicated networks to transmit multimedia content and the capability for computers to process information enables us to include more sensory modalities in complex human-machine interaction and collaborative virtual environments. Ultimately, we want to users to efficiently and accurately communicate information, emotions and alerts remotely the same way they can communicate in person. This thesis investigates human performance in tasks involving multiple sensory modalities (haptic, auditory and vision) aimed at finding the optimum feedback combination for collaborative virtual environments and complex human-machine interaction.

Recently, haptic feedback has been incorporated into various applications from automation and gaming to surgery and aviation. Haptic feedback opens a new channel of communication for human-in-the-loop systems. In this thesis, the effects of different levels of workload on task efficiency and task accuracy for haptic, auditory and visual feedback are studied. In this study, a primary task involves two of the modalities and a secondary task involves the third sensory modality are designed using Unity Game Engine to test the hypothesis that a certain combination of feedback increases performance and decreases workload.