HITL-GUARD: A Platform for Real-time Tracking of Operator Situational Awareness in Control Rooms

Abstract

The Human-in-the-Loop (HITL)-Monitor offers a non-intrusive means of monitoring operator situational awareness by measuring errors introduced by way of interactions between the operator and the Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs). Motivation for this application is partly in response to develop a system using computer vision to acquire data from legacy HMI devices common to industrial I&C systems in control rooms, field mounted control panels, etc. in nuclear power plants, aviation and locomotive industry. Visual data acquisition for real-time monitoring of legacy HMI devices does not require the target indicator device to be digitized incurring expensive retrofits, nor causes any process or production downtime. Secondly, automatic validation of equipment status during maintenance and/or prior to returning to service, is also explored through this application. Nevertheless, severity of accidents caused due to operator errors can be reduced, if HITL errors are promptly discovered, trended and intervened upon. This paper outlines the HITL-Guard design and outlines experimental framework. Current HITL-Guard platform is a work in progress with the integration of previously developed Visual Data Acquisition (ViDAQ) [1] algorithm to visually acquire rotary dial gauge Values.