A Real-Time Interactive Evaluation Method on Human Machine Interface Design

During the process of information obtaining and operation executing in main control room of nuclear power pant, the displays or control equipments must be designed according to human factor standards. The design quality of human machine interface (HMI) is influenced by many factors, such as the percentile of human models, the position and structure of display or control equipments and so on, because the relationship between these factors are very closed, so it is difficult for designers to use enough human factor parameters in design process. Although the software for human factor evaluation had been developed, they can not be compatible with 3D modeling environment. Therefore, it is impossible to evaluate the design scheme of human machine interface during its developing process. In this paper, a new human machine interface evaluation method based on 3D modeling environment is proposed, which not only can realize the real-time interactive evaluation in the designing process of structure and position parameters of displays and control equipments, but also can improve the evaluation efficiency. Meanwhile, it can ensure the compatibility between evaluation software and 3D modeling environment. Based on the guidelines of the aforementioned theory, a kind of object-oriented evaluation software is developed under Unigraphics. 3D Human model plays a very important role in the evaluation on human machine interface. Nowadays, there are no human models in China which can be directly used in the human factor evaluation on 3D equipment model. The foreign human models can not be used in China directly, because the human dimension of Chinese adult is quite different. In this paper, firstly, the human model with relevant parameters of human factor evaluation is developed, and it can create Chinese human model of any percentile with different gestures. Secondly, the evaluation software embedded with human factor standards is developed, and it can realize real-time interaction between human model and display or control equipments. With the developed evaluation software, the evaluation on displays controls and consoles could be carried out, as well as the comprehensive evaluation on the whole human machine interface. At the end of this paper, the developed software is used to evaluate the human machine interface of main control room of one power plant. According to the quantitative evaluation results, some suggestions are proposed for improving the design quality of human machine interface.Copyright © 2008 by ASME