Supporting Operators in Process Control Tasks-Benefits of Interactive 3-D Visualization

In today's automated systems, the plant operator is confronted with a growing amount of diverse and distributed data about the plant process. For process control, the operator has to observe, interpret, and integrate the process data to form a basis of decision making for input parameter settings. This difficult task is prone to errors and can quickly result in insufficient product quality. An effective display design can support the operator and mitigate this effect. Two experiments investigated whether the integration of process data in 3-D visualizations could increase the operators' performance in this environment. The first experiment examined benefits of improving reaction times and error rates for problem detection and corrective inputs. The possible reduction of the operators' workload was examined simultaneously. Additionally, experiment 1 offered insights on how interaction with the 3-D visualization could further improve the appropriateness of selected process settings by the operator. Results of this experiment showed 3-D and interaction as beneficial factors for the detection of problems in process control tasks and participants showed a low mental workload compared to 2-D presentations. In the second experiment, the scenario was extended by the investigation of a 3-D input design. In comparison to regular 2-D input, results showed that a combination of 3-D input and interaction exhibited higher accuracy in problem solving.