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Free, publicly-accessible full text available September 1, 2026
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(1) Background: The safe execution of heavy machinery operations and high-risk construction tasks requires operators to manage multiple tasks, with a constant awareness of coworkers and hazards. With high demands on visual and auditory resources, vibrotactile feedback systems offer a solution to enhance awareness without overburdening vision or hearing. (2) Aim: This study evaluates the impact of vibrotactile feedback regarding proximity to hazards on multitasking performance and cognitive workload in order to support hazard awareness in a controlled task environment. (3) Method: Twenty-four participants performed a joystick-controlled navigation task and a concurrent mental spatial rotation task. Proximity to hazards in the navigation task was conveyed via different encodings of vibrotactile feedback: No Vibration, Intensity-Modulation, Pulse Duration, and Pulse Spacing. Performance metrics, including obstacle collisions, target hits, contact time, and accuracy, were assessed alongside perceived workload. (4) Results: Intensity-Modulated feedback reduced obstacle collisions and proximity time, while lowering workload, compared to No Vibration. No significant effects were found on spatial rotation accuracy, indicating that vibrotactile feedback effectively guides navigation and supports spatial awareness. (5) Conclusions: This study highlights the potential of vibrotactile feedback to improve navigation performance and hazard awareness, offering valuable insights into multimodal safety systems in high-demand environments.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available March 11, 2026
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Shane, Jennifer S; Madson, Katherine M; Mo, Yunjeong Leah; Poleacovschi, Cristina; Sturgill, Roy E (Ed.)Teleoperation is widely used in hazardous and uncertain site settings, allowing scheduled procedures to be carried out across long distances while workers are away from the sites. Teleoperators in off-sites collect both the site information and feedback from the interfaces which provide synthesized information that a robot collects. This interface mainly conveys visionary information for the operator’s intuitiveness such as the spatial awareness of objects and surroundings. To achieve a rich visual understanding of the site, the interface should fully contain and intuitively convey the associated contextual information. Excessive or unintuitive information not only makes it difficult for operators to exert their full potential but also increases their cognitive load. This study explores how different visual interface configurations affect operators’ work performance and their cognitive load during the teleoperation task. The findings from the experimental studies are expected to help develop human-centered interfaces for teleoperation in the context of construction tasks and provide the cornerstone for not only an intuitive but fruitfully informative interface in a provided task setting.more » « less
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Turkan, Yelda; Louis, Joseph; Leite, Fernanda; Ergan, Semiha (Ed.)
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