Telecommunications Research in the United States and Selected Foreign Countries: a Preliminary Survey. Report to the National Science Foundation (1973) / Chapter Skim
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HUMAN FACTORS
HUMAN FACTORS
Pages 34-78
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From page 34... ...
TELECOMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH I Introduction Research in telecommunications technology has attracted engineering talent of the highest calibre in this country and overseas.
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It is equally important that we nurture and foster communications techniques that promote our social development. We should seek by their implementation and growing sophistication to prevent the tragedies in human relations that so commonly follow a failure of needed communications.' Health care delivery, biomedical research, and child and adult education are representative areas which will depend increasingly on the full gamut of telecommunications development to broaden and increment man's unaided capabilities.
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From page 36... ...
These clinics would operate under the direct surveillance of qualified medical staff at a regional medical facility. Staffed by paramedical personnel, they will require two-way color video links with one or more central medical facilities, including a capability for transmission of light microscopy images from the field station.
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From page 37... ...
Patient medical data, such as LKG, EEG, etc., can be effectively transmitted over voice grade telephone lines in an IRIG narrow band FM multiplex format. They can be demodulated in real time and subjected to further computer analysis and pattern-recognition techniques.
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From page 38... ...
portions of the spectrum is already suited to these narrow band requirements for distances beyond VHP or UHF coverage. The latter, however, will be increasingly used, both for direct communications between outlying fixed or mobile clinics and regional medical centers, and also in providing links to satellites.
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From page 39... ...
E Comparative Evaluation of Overseas Developments of Telecommunications for Health Care Delivery There can be little doubt that, in the elements of sophisticated technology, the United States possesses both prototype techniques and fully evolved systems that are substantially in advance of similar developments elsewhere for health care delivery.
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Moreover, developments in satellite communication will clearly allow extensive medical data transmission over international circuits, with the potential for use of sophisticated pattern recognition and image processing methods at U.S. medical centers.
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There remain substantial problems, however, in the effectiveness of human communications with computing devices, and in man's ability to interpret complex computer output displays. In part, these relate to inherent differences in operational modes in brain and computer; the brain functioning as a highly parallel processor, with relatively slow internal bit rates, and significant error probabilities that may relate to "noisy" or pseudorandom internal behavior; the computer characterized by a single address format and very high internal bit rates.
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From page 42... ...
Clearly, future developments in telecommunications will envisage these very complex pattern recognitions as occurring at the terminals of long communications links, at first over terrestrial paths, and perhaps later over interplanetary distances in space exploration. The value of reliable communications links to these automated pattern recognizers and decision makers would clearly be paramount.
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From page 43... ...
It is proposed that more effort should be applied to research to determine quantitatively just what are the limits in information processing inherent to human beings immersed in our social structure which floods them with oral, visual, written and printed information, some relevant (signals) and much irrelevant (noise)
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Roscoe, who is both a psychologist and an engineer to comment on the need for such research. His remarks entitled "The Determinants of Cognitive Channel Capacity," follow this article as Appendix A
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In each of these examples, an abrupt breakdown in responses to stimuli could be tragic. The experimental study of animate cognitive channel capacity at or near its saturation level may lead not only to the psychological discovery of the determinants of human performance in complex stimulus-decision-response situations, but also may yield bionic transfer to the design of inanimate communication channels that exhibit graceful degradation.
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From page 46... ...
A Link GAT-2 general aviation trainer, interfaced with a high-speed digital computer, simulated procedural and performance characteristics of a representative airborne area navigation system operating in an IFR air traffic environment. In the experiment, three variables were manipulated, the type of manual control system flown, the waypoint storage capacity of the simulated RNAV computing system, and the level of side-task loading to which the pilot subjects were submitted.
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From page 47... ...
In the experiment, the stress created by the side task was accompanied by a doubling of the frequency of pilot blunders, regardless of the manual control system in use. Despite the stressful effect of the elevated task loading and the four to one range of residual attention among professional pilots (approximately 0.25 to l.00 bits per second)
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For example, conversational interactive data entry requires some degree of data display. The system must enable the person who is monitoring automatic data entry or executing manual data entry
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C Optical character recognition (OCR)
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4. Human factor studies and improved speech recognition capability is required to expand voice communication capability with computers.
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Replacement of a major part of this labor with labor saving OCR equipment is desirable. There are other alternatives to OCR, such as placing key entry terminals at the source of data, or recording data in machine readable (coded)
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a. Current document transports for OCR and MICR (magnetic ink character recognition)
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Constraints placed on each of these dimensions give rise to a classification of speech recognition problems and speech recognition capability. The basic alternatives as concern speaker variation are single speaker and multiple speaker.
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2. The Difficulty of the General Speech Recognition Problem The general problem of the machine recognition of the spoken vernacular of an unknown American speaker is a problem of immense complexity.
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was concerned with continuous speech recognition and was a slow process of disillusionment because of the general difficulty of the problem.
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5. The ARPA Program ARPA has undertaken a five year program in continuous speech recognition at a projected cost of approximately 15 million dollars.
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. This program is directed toward character recognition, two-dimensional image processing, three-dimensional image processing, and speech recognition.
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Time Signals l. Voice Speech recognition Speaker verification and identification 2.
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The Japanese Government decided in l97l to invest over $l00 million for a period of eight years in research and development of a "Pattern Information Processing System" under the National Research and Development Program, with active industry and university participation. Indicative of the prevailing general interest in the U.S., the National Science Foundation held a conference in February l972 to discuss research opportunities on "pattern information processing." However, as yet there is little commercial impetus to develop image entry and/or processing capability.
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From page 60... ...
In order to penetrate successfully into the handling of biomedical images, it will be necessary to develop basic processing software, as well as to solve the problem of image entry. This dependency upon development of processing techniques and algorithms is a key difference between image entry and other types of data entry, say character recognition.
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From page 61... ...
A list of typical applications follows: - Mapping and cartography - Computer-aided drafting - Page layout and composition - LSI Chip design - Numerical machine control - Electrical circuit diagram - Piping layouts - Plant floor plans - Pert charts - Truss design - Chemical structure diagrams - Architectural drawings - Program flowcharts and documentation The data base generated as a result of graphic data entry is the key to the success of these applications. It is used for two purposes: (l)
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Classically, such work has been called human factors or behavioral science. While this work is heavily dependent on those disciplines, there appear to be a number of areas which have not been confronted by these fields, but are of growing importance.
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The intent here is to eliminate the application programmer from a broad class of simple transactions and at the same time facilitate the user in his task of data generation. A striking example of a system which facilitates data entry is the display oriented project led by Dr.
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From page 64... ...
The following list illustrates some of the possibilities: In addition to the usual line-up of cablecasting news and weather, CATV operators will be able to offer the broadband "wired city" such new two-way services as: For the home burglar and fire alarm service; banking; shopping; electronic newspapers; electronic mail; special interest programs on order; opinion polling; and meter reading. For business electronic mail; data retrieval; computer time-sharing; document transmittal; video conferencing; market testing; credit card validation; and facility security.
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From page 65... ...
It may be that the telephone system can best take care of some services and the cable television systems can most effectively handle others. Because of their great capacity and flexibility, cable systems, which will develop substantially on the basis of a few major applications, will have the capacity for many additional ones.
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From page 66... ...
How can we insure that the various sides of a complex question have been well presented before opinions are polled? Illustrative of this high variability of public opinion by polling are the wide swings in popularity ratings of politicians involved in current highly charged issues.
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From page 67... ...
Another danger involved in interactive communications is its inherent potential for the invasion of the viewer's privacy. The same technology that permits the cable television viewer to interact with the media, could enable the politician to determine which citizens are watching his program and which are watching his rival.
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b. Interactive home terminal research.
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From page 69... ...
Campaigning on Cable Television, National Cable Television Association, l972. National Cable Television Association, Inc., Statistics on Cable Television Systems.
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We would like to know whether in fact there are appropriate curricula and academic courses for specializing in telecommunications engineering, whether these courses and curricula are fully appropriate to the present and future needs, insofar as we can anticipate them. Relevant to the above is the observation of some of us in the industry, that in spite of the recent apparent abundance of engineering talent available in the electronics industry due to the depressed state of the defense and aerospace industries, competent professional level telecommunications engineers available to assume responsibility are really very scarce.
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III. Professional Training - Present and Recent Past How is professional engineering training in telecommunications provided at the present time, and how has it been provided in the recent past?
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IV. Suggested New Elective Courses for the Telecommunications Engineering Curriculum ~" What are the items of professional training in telecommunications that are generally missing?
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Health Navigation Law Enforcement Special state and local issues Regulation Surveillance - radar Education The list is obviously not complete, but is representative of the types of studies which professional training must include.
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From page 74... ...
Following is a listing of significant elements of the telecommunications industry that already need - or will in the near future - need additional professional telecommunications engineering talent. - Common Carrier: Domestic common carriers like ATT, independent telephone companies, specialized common carriers for data and teleprocessing like Datran, MCI, Western Union, etc.
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From page 75... ...
- CATV: The related field of cable television is emerging with a projected growth of l0-25% a year over the next l0 years depending on the regulatory climate. This will call for a large amount of professional engineering talent, if it is to fulfill even a portion of its promise for the industry and society.
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From page 76... ...
This means that the rest of the telecommunications industry must take care of its own professional training as best it can, depending on internal resources, on graduate professional training in the schools and universities, and on practical on-the-job training or no training at all. There is one other characteristic of the ATT training in the industry which is very interesting.
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From page 77... ...
Though in most cases the foreign telecommunications industries are very substantially differently organized from ours, they are beginning to face many of the same problems as we are. VIII Graduate Centers for Telecommunications Policy Studies All of the above pertains to professional engineering training, including consideration of industrial and social problems as they impact the engineering field.
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From page 78... ...
78 like an important step in a desirable direction. Such centers,when effectively implemented, could do justice to the many policy issues and implications which involve society, the general public and the nation in a very significant way.
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