Design of a Human Machine Interface for Training Activities with Prodders

This paper presents the Human Machine Interface (HMI) that has been designed for improving the training activities of demining operations carried out with prodders. The proposed HMI will contribute in gathering, analysing, presenting and consolidating the information acquired with an intelligent feedback prodder that has been especially conceived for interacting with this application. The friendly graphic user interface will present the data received in an efficient format, maximizing the instructor’s ability for monitoring, processing and assessing the trainee performance. The different components, features and functions of the HMI are described in detail through this document. Introduction Humanitarian demining is difficult and dangerous, as it requires the complete removal of all mines and the return of the cleared minefield to normal use [1-3]. Metal detectors and prodders are still the most important tools for humanitarian demining. Prodders are mainly used as complement to the metal detectors, so that once a possible target has been detected, the prodder permits to locate it in the terrain. Finding mines with a prodder involves pushing tool into the ground and relaying on tactile feedback to identify an obstruction that maybe a mine [4]. Prodding on antipersonnel mines is a major cause of demining accidents in some countries, especially where the soil is hard or rocky. Some studies [5] involving field measurements of the force exerted by the operators showed that deminers, and even senior training staff, had no real idea of the force they were using and consistently underestimated the force they were exerting by large amounts. To alleviate this situation, an intelligent prodder, which gives to the deminer information about the amount of force exerted and alerts him when the prodder’s angle is approaching or exceeding a certain limit, has been designed and implemented. The emphasis in this article will be put on the description of the proposed HMI. The interface will be responsible of collecting the data acquired by the instrumented prodder, processing and analysing the measured performance variables, and presenting the essential information required during the training sessions. The rest of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2 briefly introduces the intelligent feedback prodder responsible for acquiring the performance data during the training sessions. Section 3 describes the screen components, links and functions of the HMI and finally, Section 4 summarises major conclusions. Intelligent feedback prodder The intelligent feedback prodder for training consists of a HMI, an instrumented prodder, a data acquisition module and an electronic module for signals conditioning. All basic parts of the instrumented prodder (sensors, a rod with a sharp spike, a handle and an extension) are separable with the ability of replacing different extensions in order to obtain different versions of the prodders, depending on the demining training needs. For the design of the instrumented prodder, two main types of sensors have been evaluated and selected: a load cell and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). Table 1 and 2 summarise the main technical specifications of the selected compression load cell and the IMU, respectively. The electronic module for signals conditioning is responsible of filtering and amplifying the force sensor output in order to meet the requirements of the next stage, in which the data acquisition module converts the resulting * Centre for Automation and Robotics CAR CSIC-UPM. Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Ctra. Campo Real Km 0,200 La Poveda, Arganda del Rey, 28500 Madrid, Spain. E-mails: {roemi.fernandez, carlota.salinas, hector.montes, javier.sarria, manuel.armada}@car.upm-csic.es † Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Technological University of Panama, Panama City, Panama.