A Comparison of Four Interfaces for Selecting and Controlling Remote Cameras

Many Traffic Management Centers (TMCs) rely heavily on remote cameras for detecting and verifying incidents, and for maintaining surveillance of the roadway system. A TMC operator may have access to dozens, or even hundreds, of remote cameras. In the present experiment we compared four interfaces (joystick, keyboard, mouse, and touchscreen) for selecting and controlling remote cameras. Preset cameras (i.e., views were restricted to a predefined set of pan, tilt, and zoom coordinates) were also compared to manual cameras (i.e., no presets). The touchscreen interface was found to be more prone to produce errors in selecting cameras. Preset cameras were found to be superior to manual cameras in most aspects. The good performance of subjects using the keyboard interface is especially noteworthy. Implications for TMC design are discussed.