Human Support by Rhythm Control

This study aims to construct a design method of human friendly machines, which enables human to use their full potential. We especially focus on skill based implicit support by adjustment of machine characteristics. Skill support based on such information is expected to raise the performance of novice operators as well as psychological impressions. From such viewpoint, this paper focuses on operational and biological rhythms. As the first step, relationships of such rhythms in experienced operators engaged in machine tool operation are examined. Under the assumption that experienced operators feel friendliness to the system as well as having the ability of achieving high performance, a support system was designed for novices to enable generation of rhythms similar to experienced operators. Experiments were carried out to evaluate the support system, which adjusts its interface characteristics according to respiration rhythms. Results show the support system increases performance by means of work accuracy as well as psychological impressions.