Comparison of hands-free versus conventional wearable computer control for maintenance applications

Past research on wearable computers for maintenance applications has focused on developing displays and presentation formats. This study emphasized wearable computer control technologies. Alternative control technologies were compared with standard and voice controls. Twelve subjects performed a synthetic maintenance task using three control device combinations for three different types of input. Time and error data were collected. The results show that for pointer movement, standard controls took significantly longer than voice. For discrete input, standard controls required significantly more time than voice and alternative controls. However, there were no significant time differences among controllers for text entry fill-in. Error results showed no significant differences. This research suggests that alternative and voice controls provide similar performance levels and both are superior to standard controls. In environments with changing noise spectra and noise levels such as a flight line, the alternative control suite provides hands-free control that complements voice without sacrificing performance.