Accidental Inversion during Three-Dimensional Orientational Control

Abstract

This research investigates a type of operator error, referred to here as accidental inversion, which occurs during manipulation of the pitch and yaw of a real or simulated object in a three-dimensional environment. Specifically, we investigated whether accidental inversion is linked to a hypothetical individual difference variable referred to here as “axis-mapa“ expectation. Participants exhibited two distinct types of axis-map expectations to the exact same visual stimuli– matching and ambiguous. An important implication for person-machine systems is that one should expect naïve operators to already have a pre-conceived notion of how an interface for orientational control works and that different operators may have different, and possibly opposite, axis-map expectations