Performance and Workload Monitoring and Measurement
in Telerobotics:
Safe Handling of Nuclear Material
This web page was
prepared with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy, Cooperative
Agreement No. DE-FC04-95AL85832. However, any opinions, findings,
conclusions, or recommendations expressed herein are those of
the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of DOE.
This work was conducted through the Amarillo National Resource
Center for Plutonium.
Telerobotic (remotely operated) sytems have been proposed for use in the safe handling of nuclear material in association with, for example, the dismantling of nuclear weapons and storage of nuclear materials obtained from this process. A variety of operational tasks and telerobitc system designs can be envisioned for carrying out such processes. The level of performance that is possible with candidate systems and the "workload" imposed on operators by different systems and different tasks are important issues that impact safety. As part of a larger group effort (including research colleagues at Texas Tech Universiy and Texas A&M University) researching telerobotic issues in the safe handling of nuclear material, the University of Texas a Arlington's Human Performance Institute has been developing methods for quantifying task performance and operator workload. These efforts are sponsored by the Amarillo The major thrust of this effort