Evaluation of Visual, Auditory and Vibro-Tactile Alerts in Supervised Interfaces

In teleoperation, particularly when controlling systems performing tasks that must be supervised for many hours, human users cannot keep a high level of attention all time. An open issue in the design of such interfaces is to help the user to maintain a situational awareness. In this paper, we compare three types of alert signals aiming to inform users about critical situations that require their full attention. Haptic, visual and auditory signals were assessed as pre-attention mechanisms for tasks in a camera-based supervisory interface scenario. Results show that haptic alerts, for long term supervision, are more effective than auditory and visual ones.