Objective
To simulate a real-world work task, image you are are asked to examine a new technology and report back to management on how the technology can best be used in your company. This means you have to find products that have similar capabilities, compare them (especially on human factors) and recommend a product.
The Technology:
Linear motorized treadmills as you would find in any fitness center have been used in human factor labs for many years. The typical exercises might involve anthropometric measurements of subjects walking on the treadmill. Some researchers began adding a projected scene on a screen or television/monitor to add an environment variable to their studies. Numerous limitations exist including the uni-directional treadmill and the narrow field-of-view of a projected scene on a display or screen. What if the uni-directional limitation were lifted? What kind of studies could now be done with omni-directional tracking of subjects?
Virtuix Omni plans to release an omni-directional treadmill in mid-2015 that can be paired with a head-mounted virtual reality display for gamers. Upon further searching you find that other companies also have similar products in development using various slip surfaces or rollers. You also discover that motorized omnidirectional treadmills have been in development for over a decade though quite expensive. The industrial engineer would welcome a product that “reads input data from your actions which can be fed into an application” such as site familiarization, site navigation training, facility walkthrough, and risk assessments.
Your task for this project is to find the best use of this technology for a human factors lab (yours actually) and justify the use of this technology, especially from human factors perspective, and recommend the most appropriate project to purchase. For example, some omni-treadmills place you in a harness (to track motion) and others do not.
Organizing the Work:
For 1 person group – find omnidirectional treadmills and compare 2
Three deliverables to keep you on schedule (dates on the Moodle assignment).
Part 1 identifies available technologies
Part 2 explores use of each product
Part 3 is final report comparing products and making recommendation