Proposal of new paradigm for hand and foot controls in the context of spatial compatibility effect

Many workstations make heavy use of the hands for primary control of a process. If some control tasks can be assigned to the feet, there would be an obvious benefit in having the hands free for other tasks that require a higher level of precision and dexterity. Spatial compatibility between displays and controls is a weighty determinant of performance. This paper proposes a research framework that aims to 1. Design and conduct a series of spatial compatibility experiments for measuring human subjects' response preferences and choice reaction times at different configurations of displays and hand and foot controls. 2. Investigate the effect of interaction between hand and foot controls in such configurations. 3. Determine the optimum positional mappings of hand and foot controls with visual signals presented at different planes of displays. The objective is progress toward an optimal human-machine interface design for improving overall system performance. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.