Kinematic modeling and analysis of the human workspace for visual perceptibility

Abstract

For manual tasks that require continuous visual control, human visual system constraints should be satisfied. Two different approaches are proposed to model the visual system and to analyze the workspace. In the first model, visual optimality of sample horizontal planes of the human workspace are computed. For this purpose, field-of-view (FOV) and focus constraints are applied to the planes to evaluate the feasible points. Accordingly, resolution and motion resolvability measures of those points are computed to determine workspace optimality. The concept of motion resolvability is explained, and it is shown that the model can be used as a measure for evaluating human visual perception. To estimate a 3-D space where objects are observed with a high resolution in the center of FOV, a second model is introduced. In this model, three eye constraints (resolution, focus, and FOV) are modeled as the joint limits of a 6-degrees-of-freedom manipulator that resembles the human eye. The workspace of the manipulator is generated using the swept-volumes and the brute-force methods. A pilot study was done to verify the proposed measures.