Human cognition in manual assembly: Theories and applications

Human cognition in production environments is analyzed with respect to various findings and theories in cognitive psychology. This theoretical overview describes effects of task complexity and attentional demands on both mental workload and task performance as well as presents experimental data on these topics. A review of two studies investigating the benefit of augmented reality and spatial cueing in an assembly task is given. Results demonstrate an improvement in task performance with attentional guidance while using contact analog highlighting. Improvements were obvious in reduced performance times and eye fixations as well as in increased velocity and acceleration of reaching and grasping movements. These results have various implications for the development of an assistive system. Future directions in this line of applied research are suggested. The introduced methodology illustrates how the analysis of human information processes and psychological experiments can contribute to the evaluation of engineering applications.