New technologies of human/machine interaction: a prospective study in the military naval context

Today, military defense vessels are equipped with many systems that allow sailors to interact with each other or with their digital equipments. These systems are relatively efficient and allow mariners to perform their tasks efficiently and securely. It is important to identify new technologies that sailors can interact with, in the future. An evaluation must then be conducted to ensure compliance with their usefulness, usability and acceptability. This paper discusses how to study, upstream, various innovative technologies in order to identify the positive and negative points and to conduct a human factors evaluation following a user-centric approach, replicating operational conditions. The paper focuses then on three widely available technologies. The first is the eye-control, which allows an operator to interact with a digital system thanks to the movements and fixation of his eyes. This system allows validating information being displayed on a screen or to navigate in an interface when the operator has his hands busy with another task. Different interactions are available today (scrolling, clicking, and displaying a keyboard to write using the eyes ...). However, various limitations were highlighted during the first human factors evaluations, for example visual fatigue or calibration of the eye-tracking system, which is also sensitive to the movements of the operator and those of the platform on which it is based. The second and the third technologies presented are related because they both concern communications. In very noisy environments or when there are different sound sources, it is sometimes difficult for operators to be attentive to all auditory information or to be heard effectively. Bone conduction systems (for listening and for expression) allow the operator to be attentive to different sound sources while speaking audibly. As for the bone conduction listening system, the sound vibrations conducted by the bones reproduce a listening equivalent to classical hearing. Concerning the throat microphone, the treatment of the waves captured at the throat makes it possible to transmit a clear sound, without any environmental interference, which makes it possible to guarantee the good intelligibility of the speech. This paper concludes on how these studies from the human factor service of the research and development department of Naval Group (France) are related to advance research in these areas as well as trials for future equipment that can be developed on board for naval defense vessels