Cognitive 'visual' processing and manual dexterity: The influence of eye-to-hand coordination on a plant operator’s aptitude

Findings obtained from a recent plant professional questionnaire revealed that eye-to-hand coordination may influence a plant operator’s ability to operate their machine efficiently and effectively. In addition, it is hypothesized that measuring eye-to-hand coordination can also determine whether the operator is likely to retain sufficient skills required to become competent. This paper reports upon the findings of seminal research work which used an excavator simulator to monitor the eye-to-hand coordination of plant operators within the Royal School of Military Engineering, UK Ministry of Defence. The simulator sought to elicit information on the operator’s ability to first load an object (a sphere) and then discharge it onto a dump target; this action was repeated ten times prior to test conclusion. Pearson’s correlation was then used to measure the strength of relationship between recorded times and hit rates. Some correlation (r = - 0.51) between the time taken to complete the test and the hit rate was evident; this would illustrate that eye-to-hand coordination is an important measurement that could be used to test an operator’s aptitude. The test group of operators (that is, those who were exposed to simulator training) were then compared to a dummy group (those who were not exposed to simulator training) to determine whether there was any significant difference in the time taken to complete a predefined excavation 'test dig' exercise. Results of a t-test (p = 0.05) revealed that a significant difference was apparent between the two sub samples. Future work is proposed which will investigate this area further and prove these initial findings conclusively.