Ergonomics Commons^™

Kwad - Ksu All Weather Autonomous Drone, Nick Farinacci, Sebastian Gomez, Stewart Baker, Ed Sheridan

Symposium of Student Scholars

"KWAD" or "KSU all-Weather Autonomous Drone" project was sponsored by Ultool, LLC to the KSU Research and Service Foundation to create a lightweight drone capable of capturing HD video during all-weather operations. The conditions of all-weather operation include rainfall of one inch per hour and wind speeds of up to twenty miles per hour. In addition, a global minimum structural safety factor of two is required to ensure the system's integrity in extreme weather conditions. Potential mission profiles include autonomous aerial delivery, topological mapping in high moisture areas, security surveillance, search and rescue operations, emergency transportation of medical supplies, and …

Adaptive Task Allocation In Automated Vehicles, Skye Taylor, Bin Hu, Jing Chen

Psychology: Interdisciplinary Research in Behavioral Sciences of Transportation Issues

Adaptive task allocation is used in many human-machine systems and has been proven to improve operators’ monitoring and/or performance with automated systems. However, there is little knowledge surrounding the benefits of adaptive task allocation in automated vehicles. In this study, participants were presented with media depicting driving scenarios of both low and high workload at two levels of automation. The participants reported which tasks they felt comfortable allocating to themselves or to the automated system in each driving scenario, as well as whether they would conduct the task allocation manually or have the automated system automatically allocate the tasks. The …

Identifying Scotomata In Hazard Identification Caused By Ignorance And Overconfidence, Allen Johanson

Masters Theses

The manufacturing and construction industries are two of the most dangerous professions, and employees are frequently exposed to hazards and hazardous conditions which can lead to serious injury or even death. An observed phenomenon, frequently called the Dunning-Kruger Effect states that unskilled people are often unaware of their shortcomings and those with the higher-level skills often underestimate their abilities. This study examines employees’ training, years of experience, and performance to gauge any correlations among these variables in the area of hazard awareness. The goal of this study is to help individuals to recognize blind spots in their knowledge to identify …

Civilian Pepper Spray For Self Defense: Understanding User Perception And Impact Of Design On User Performance, David Strybel, Anil R. Kumar

Faculty Publications

Pepper spray is widely used in the US, and is marketed as an effective self-defense device. While pepper spray can be useful in deterring an attacker, many pepper spray owners do not have any experience using it. There is a dearth of published studies that focus on civilian pepper-spray use, not to mention first time pepper-spray users. A study to analyze pepper-spray designs with first-time users, to see how the design, specifically the safety mechanism, affects response time and overall performance would be helpful. The study was conducted in 2 parts – a survey to understand user perception, and a …

Implications Of Variability Of Electromyographic Measurements For Assessing Localized Muscle Fatigue, Hamad Nasser Alasim

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The impact of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) is enormous due to a combination of direct and indirect costs associated with healthcare, lost workdays and human suffering. Because of the established relationship between Localized Muscle Fatigue (LMF) development and WMSDs, and in order to reduce and/or prevent WMSDs in workplaces, different fatigue assessment methods have been developed. Surface Electromyography (SEMG) is a commonly used LMF assessment technique. The SEMG signals are typically analyzed in time and frequency domains to predict LMF based on a relative change with respect to initial, or under no-fatigue conditions. Quantifying such change, however, relies on the …

The Business Case For Industrial Safety: Revealing The Comprehensive Value Of Ergonomic Investments For Manufacturing Enterprises In Industry 4.0, Shane Stan

Honors Theses

How can today’s manufacturing enterprises construct, implement, and optimize modern safety initiatives in a manner that will present maximum return on investment and facilitate enterprise growth? Furthermore, how can these manufacturers assure individual ergonomic investments become part of a larger strategy to facilitate organizational change in safety? This work addresses these questions by placing industrial ergonomics in a business improvement context which comprehensively presents the financial returns and growth opportunities poised by modern safety initiatives. Additionally, to further strengthen the business case for industrial safety, an ergonomic action planning framework is established to guide the creation of holistic safety programs …

Smart Travel, Apoorva Sulakhe

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

The purpose of this poster is to further explore the idea of a “SMART” travel app. To design an app that is self-monitoring, that could analyze data and present the best travel options for customers in terms of available providers, price and time. Not only should the app be beneficial to customers but it should also be beneficial to providers. Through a series of analysis, questionnaires and eye tracking experiments our team was able to design an app that will provide customers with the information needed to make a well-informed decision on how to travel from point A to B, …

Chocolate Bar Wrapping Machine, Austin M. Hoff, Daniel R. Trepke, Caleb B. Krichbuam

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Gilbert Chocolates has proposed to manufacture a machine to wrap chocolate bars. This machine is intended to replace two people wrapping the chocolate bars by hand, which is a time consuming method. This is especially apparent between October and January when the workers are working long hours in preparation for the Christmas rush of customers. Currently wrapping a bar takes about a minute and Gilbert Chocolates wants this time reduced down to 20-30 seconds. The budget for this project is set at $1000, and is being funded by the company. This machine needs to fit in a cubic foot of …

Solar Turbines Compressor Blade Installation Tools, Ryan Bruce, Carolyn Honeycutt, Stephen Oltrogge, Emmett Ross

Mechanical Engineering

The following report documents a California Polytechnic State University, Mechanical Engineering Senior Project sponsored by the gas turbine manufacturer, Solar Turbines. The senior project team consisted of four senior mechanical engineering students at Cal Poly, all with general concentrations; Ryan Bruce, Carolyn Honeycutt, Steve Oltrogge, and Emmett Ross. Kenneth Thomas sponsored the group and serves as the point of contact between the senior project team and Solar Turbines. He is a member of the Solar Turbines Mechanical Design Engineering Team and a Cal Poly graduate. Christoph Maurer served as the project team’s on-campus advisor.

A gas turbine uses internal combustion …

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …