A Basic Study on Virtual Collaborator as an Innovative Human-Machine Interface in Distributed Virtual Environment: — The Prototype System and Its Implication for Industrial Application —

The objective of this study is to develop “Virtual Collaborator” as a new type of human-machine interface, which works as “intelligent interface agent” to help machine operators manipulating large scale machine system such as power plants. The Virtual Collaborator is a sort of “virtual robot” which behaves as if an intelligent agent robot in virtual reality space, who can communicate naturally with human like humans do with each other. As for the first stage of the virtual collaborator development, a prototype system has been constructed. While the prototype system has no communication function with humans, it can behave just like a plant operator in the simulated control room of nuclear power plant in virtual reality space. And the intelligent capabilities being implemented into the present prototype system are: (i)anomaly detection and root cause diagnosis by checking instrumentation status, and (ii)counter-operation to cope with plant emergency in accordance to the emergency response manual. The animation of operator behavior is visualized on the large projection display, and the presented virtual operator can verbalize what is in ‘his mind’, and explain what he is thinking. Although the current prototype system has no bi-directional communication capability with human, it can be applied to some industrial fields.