In recent years, progress has been made regarding the use of tactile devices such as belts and helmets for navigational tasks. As most of the devices and solutions so far have focused on presenting one type of information at a time, the potential for tactile devices for simultaneous multiple tasks have yet to be properly explored. Based on such research, this study investigates various methods of presenting multiple simultaneous information using a vibrotactile head-mounted device for navigational tasks in a virtual space. The goal is to determine if it is possible to effectively present various simultaneous navigational information with vibrotactile feedback in a virtual space, and if so, determine guidelines for doing so while avoiding cognitive overload. Using a tactile head-mounted device known as the Perman Helmet various functions related to several navigational tasks in a virtual space were developed. These tasks were collision avoidance, object search and compass orientation. First a test was conducted to determine the most suitable solution for each given task. For each task three different types of solutions were developed, tested, and evaluated in an appropriate testing scenario. Afterwards, a second test was conducted to determine guidelines for how to combine those various solutions to present as much information as possible while avoiding cognitive overload. A new testing environment was created that incorporated all three tasks and various combination of the solutions were tested, along with two special configurations to test other factors. The results from the experiments shows that using several simultaneous vibrotactile signals representing different types of information is feasible and practical with at least 3 different types of signals. Furthermore, various types approaches and combinations have been considered and compared. Based on these findings, several guidelines when developing systems informing a user with multiple vibrotactile feedback signals have been proposed. These findings could help hasten the development of commercial and industrial multiuse vibrotactile devices, making it a relevant field of study. / Under senare år har en rad framsteg gjorts i utveckling av haptiska enheter så som bälten och hjälmar för navigation. Då fokus har legat på att en enhet ska lösa ett specifikt problem saknas det ordentlig utredning av haptiska enheters potential att hantera flera uppgifter simultant. Baserat på tidigare forskning utforskas det i denna rapport olika metoder att presentera multipla simultana informationsflöden via en vibrotaktil huvudmonterad enhet i syfte att navigera en virutell miljö. Baserat på om dessa metoder kan användas effektivt utan att överbelasta en användare tas därefter riktlinjer för sådana system fram. Med hjälp av en taktil huvudmonterad enhet kallad Perman Hjälmen togs en rad funktioner ämnade för att navigera i en virtuell rymd fram. Dessa funktioner var kollisionsförebyggande system, målsökning samt kompassorientering. För varje funktion togs tre olika lösningar fram och utvärderades i en lämplig miljö. Efteråt utfördes ett andra experiment för att ta fram riktlinjer för hur olika lösningar för olika uppgifter bör kombineras för att presentera maximal mängd information utan att överbelasta användare. En ny anpassad testmiljö utvecklades och olika kombinationer av lösningar till de olika uppgifterna utvärderades. Även två specialkonfigurationer togs fram för att testa specifika faktorer. Resultaten från experimenten visade att använda flera simultana vibrotaktila informationsflöden var praktiskt möjligt med åtminstone tre distinkta typer av flöden. Utöver detta har olika tillvägagångssätt och kombinationer övervägts och jämförts. Baserat på detta har flera riktlinjer tagits fram för utveckling och vidareforskning av system med multipla simultana vibrotaktila informationsflöden. Dessa slutsatser kan komma att bidra till vidareutveckling av framtida kommersiella och industrianpassade vibrotaktila enheter, vilket gör detta ett relevant forskningsområde.

This thesis project aims to study the design of an Augmented Reality solution for the industry that benefits the user. Three industry-related roles are studied individually, the shop floor worker role, the line manager role, and the maintenance worker role. In order to do this, two different information display approaches; having access to a personal source of information, and having distributed sources of information linked to the working space, are implemented, analyzed, and compared, from acognitive ergonomics perspective. Insight on how the different design decisions can affect the outcome of the Augmented Reality system in each case, is extracted from performance, usability, perceived workload, and user experience evaluations of each of the approaches for each of the roles. The design and creation methodology for information system and computing research is followed for this project. A literature review is performed in order to define and understand the addressed problem, solutions are proposed in an iterative process, culminating in the implementation of the final idea, which is then evaluated by a group of test subjects. These evaluations target cognitive ergonomics assessments of the different design approaches and their results are collected and analyzed in order to draw conclusions and present the project’s findings. The obtained results point to a set of different strengths and weaknesses for each of the Augmented Reality approaches implemented for each of the industry roles considered. For the shop floor and maintenance workers, distributed approaches for information display can be more exciting and engaging, but they can also increase task completion time, in comparison to information displayed in personal panels. However, the results point to line managers can possibly benefit more from the use of personal panels. / <p>Det finns övrigt digitalt material (t.ex. film-, bild- eller ljudfiler) eller modeller/artefakter tillhörande examensarbetet somska skickas till arkivet.</p>