Interaction between an operator and the control desk at the control room of the railway traffic: A Serbian experience

Abstract

AbstractThe subject of this paper is the interaction between an operator and the control desk at the Railway Traffic Control Room (RTCR) in Nis, Serbia. The following methods were used for this research: operators' anthropometric measurement; determining of maximum force of the movements of operators' arms; an analysis of workload of the movements of operators' arms, heads and torsos, and an analysis of errors in operators' movements in response to visual cues. The paper presents the following results: static parameter of 20 anthropometric measures of 41 operators' bodies were measured; nine corresponding dimensions of particular body parts for 5th, 50th, and 95th percentile were calculated; 10 characteristic work angles were measured; five corresponding functional body parts were calculated; times and distances covered by operators' arms were measured; maximum forces used for these movements were calculated; positions and number of movements of arms, heads, and torsos of operators were determined, and movement errors and probability of movement errors in choice of direction, arms and cumulative conditional probability were calculated. The research was conducted with the aim of discovering determining factors of mutual synchronization of the operator and desk.