As drivers spend more time in their cars, perception of driving a vehicle turns from utilizing a transportation means into residing in a personal space or even in moving office. Such a perception renders automobile manufacturers incorporate more vehicle functions, especially in-vehicle information systems As the number of system functions increases, the complexity of control and 2 types of display menus were designed after a literature review and a market analysis. With these controls and display menus, the experiment was performed to look into the difference of driver performance and preference on the integrated vehicle control type. Finally, the study suggests the integrated vehicle control type to minimize driver's cognitive load, and to use various functions efficiently. The study also discusses the practical use of the final integrated vehicle control type.

The physiological and biochemical responses of healthy men and women to life stress were measured in order to temperature, blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR) and galvanic skin response (GSR) were selected as physiological stress indices and salivary cortisol level was used as a biochemical stres biomarker. Twenty six (male 14 and female 13) colege students were participated in the experiment. Female showed the significant higher value of salivary cortisol level (p<0.01), diastolic BP (p<0.01), and HR (p<0.01) than male. The difference of skin temperature between forehead and fingertip correlated significantly with salivary cortisol level (p<0.01). The LF(low frequency)/HF(high frequency) ratio of HRV also correlated significantly with salivary cortisol level (p<0.01). However, BP, HR and GSR corelated insignificantly with salivary cortisol level. We suggest that LF/HF ratio of HRV and skin temperature may be good indices for the assessment of life stress, and may apply to measure the stress level of individual in real time.

Despite the widespread use of laterally wedged insoles for patients with knee osteoarthritis and medially wedged insoles for controlling rearfoot pronation, an understanding of the effects of wedged insoles was limited and sometimes controversial. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of wedged insoles on the kinematics and kinetics of normal gait. Ten male subjects without history of lower limb disorders were recruited. Each subject performed four gait cycles under each of seven conditions; shod with 5$^{\circ}$, 8$^{\circ}$ and 15$^{\circ}$, 8$^{\circ}$ and 15$^{\circ}$ laterally wedged insoles. In order to determine statistical differences among seven conditions, the measured temporal spatial variables, angular displacements, joint moments, and ground reaction forces were compared with a one-way analysis of variance. Some significant changes induced by wedged insoles were apparent in joint moments and ground reaction forces. The medially wedged insole increased the laterally directed ground reaction force and varus moments at the ankle force and varus moments at the ankle and the knee.

This study was performed to evaluate the characteristics of transmitted vibration to hand-arm system under different work posture while operating a light-weighted powered hand grinder. For the experiment, 8 different types of wrist posture (natural, unlar-flexion, radual-flexion, flexion, extension, complex posture, and etc.) and 3 types of feed force (20[N], 50[N], 70[N]) were considered. 10 male subjects were employed to polish metal plate with a hand grinder. All of them were normal and healthy with no history and symptom of the work related musculoskeletal disorders in the dominant hand. Vibration acceleration data were recorded with sampling rate, 2048[Hz]. In addition, unweighted overall R.M.S. acceleration at the tool and wrist, and transmissibility between them were used to evaluate factors from the recorded tri-axial vibration acceleration. The results indicate that transmissibility of natural wrist posture was significantly higher than others. In addition, as the feed force becomes larger, the vibration was transmitted in large quantities to hand-arm system through radius.

The purpose of this study was to develop a comprehensive posture classification scheme considering the effects of external load and motion repetition as well as those of working posture. The scheme was developed based on a series of existing empirical studies dealing with postural classification scheme, effects of external load and motion repetition. Ranges of joint motions, external load and motion repetition were divided into the groups with the same degree of discomforts. Each group was assigned a numerical relative discomfort score of code on the basis of discomfort values for the neutral position of elbow flexion. The criteria for evaluating stress of working postures were proposed based on the four distinct action categories, in order to enable practitioners to apply appropriate corrective actions. The proposed scheme was compared with OWAS, RULA and REBA. The comparison revealed that while the proposed scheme and RULA showed similar results for the working postures with light external load and non-repetitive postures, the former overestimated postural load for postures with moderate or heavy external load and repetitive postures than the latter.

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis about robotics concerning the emotional response of humans to robots and other non-human entities. Although it stands today as one of the robots and synthetic characters, the uncanny valley was speculative and few studies have been performed to test the theory. In two experiments, a total of 183 participants were employed to explore this hypothesis. The results of experiment 1 indicate that the perceived human likeness of a robot is not a key factor causing uncanny valley. And the results of experiments 2 suggest that even if the appearance and motion of a robot become fully human, the emotional response of humans could not reach human-human empathy levels.

The purpose of this study is to assess the welfare level for shift workers by means of their satisfactions to the jobs in manufacturing environment. As a measurement tool of job satisfaction, we use the JDI(Job Descriptive Index) which can ensure reliability and are widely used. Measurement factors are investigated by means of the duty, payment, promotion, supervisor, co-workers, and general job satisfaction of shift workers. For the application of job satisfaction, 109 workers, 12-hour shift workers in domestic five companies related with manufacturing industry are considered. They treat general facilities in night shift work. The result of this study may be used as a strategic data of welfare policy for improving the welfare level of shift workers.

One of the most important aspects to succeed in character industry is to develop a character that it can sensibly satisfy customers. For this, sensibility evaluation has to be carried character design have to be analyzed, firstly. In this study, sensibility evaluation using multi-variate analysis was performed for some humanized characters. From the factor analysis, sensibility factors were extracted and sensibility characteristics for characters were analyzed by those factors. Preference for those characters was evaluated and was analyzed in relation to those sensibility characteristics. Finally, a direction of character design was proposed from those results.

Shoe's size and shape are determined by the last that takes shape of foot because last is the mold of shoe in development and manufacturing process. Then adaptation between foot and shoe is dependent on the last. In mass shoe production, model size is developed in the first place, other sized lasts are made through the grading process based on model size. The most important factor in grading system is grading deviation that must be same amount induced from foot measuring database. At present, most of the last manufacturing companies in korea using 260mm as a standard foot model size. When length grading deviation is 5mm, the ball girth grading deviation is 3.7mm and the ball width grading deviation is 1.2mm. I verified existing grading system by comparing grading results with foot measuring data. Also, I proposed reasonable grading deviation and application method of grading system. From the analysis of foot measuring database, reasonable grading deviations are 1.22mm in ball width and 0.84mm in ankle height in case of length grading deviation is 5mm. I confirmed that the current grading system is very accurate. When we grade last from 230mm to 290mm by current grading system based on model size 260mm, there is grading error over 1mm in the front outside area of foot. This error level of 1mm is no problem in normal walking shoe's last, but it induces adaptation problems in sports and special purposed shoe's last. Therefore using of three standard model size is recommended in grading men's last for reducing grading deviation error under the level of 1mm. It is specifically described as 235mm in 225-245mm, 260mm in 250-270mm, 285mm in 275-295mm. According to the above recommended grading system, it is enough to measure only three foot sizes in case of foot measuring project for men's last development.

Demand forecasting methods for a consumer product such as TV or refrigerator are widely known. However, sales forecast for a brand new product cannot be estimated using conventional forecasting methods. This study proposes a five-step procedure in forecasting a newly developed product. Step one defines functions in a High Touch product in order to estimate relative attraction of the product to consumer group. In step two, for a comparison purpose, a compatible product that is successfully penetrated into market is selected. Step three breaks a target population into many segments based on demography. Step four calculates relative attraction between the High Touch product and the compatible product. Finally, market penetration rate of the High Touch product is estimated using a bell-shaped diffusion curve of the compatible product. The process offers a method to estimate potential demand and growth pattern of the new High Touch product.

KTX (Korea Train eXpress) is launched as the $5^{th}$ develop a ride-comfort model for high-speed rail pasengers using structural equation model (SEM). Both qualitative and quantitative factors affecting ride-comfort were investigated, and employed to construct a comprehensive ride-comfort model. The SEM model was built with twenty measurement variables and seven latent variables for the evaluation of ride-comfort of high-speed train passenger. A total of six hundreds thirty two subjects participated in the evaluation using face-to-face survey method. As a result, the proposed SEM model model fitnes (GFI=0.93). According to the results, overall ride-comfort was significantly affected by the seat-, fatigue-, interior-related, and customer satisfaction variables such as fare. Among the engineering design variables of high-speed train, seat-related variables were identified as critical factors of the ride-comfort. It is expected that the result of this study could be useful for the enhancement of ride comfort in next generation KTX.

As many as 111 reactor trips have occurred for recent 5 years('01-'05), and 26 cases of them have occurred due to human error. The trend of human error rate didn't decrease in 2004, so KHNP started to make efforts to decrease human errors. In 2006 KHNP bench marked excellent foreign nuclear power plants and introduced human error prevention tools. In addition, KHNP created as many as 40 posters for human performance improvement. The posters are based on the about 500 real incident reports collected through K-HPES from 1995. Therror preventive tols for the poster. This paper explains design of the posters and their application.

The analog typed interface of main control room in nuclear power plant(NPP) is gradually being replaced to the one suitable for the digital environment. SKN 3,4 is currently developed in such a way to employ digitalized displays and controls such as computerized procedure system(CPS), large display panel(LDP), and Soft control. The main control room (MCR) of the SKN3, 4 was designed based on the human factors guidelines, which somehow lack of the confidence for the rapidly the developed guidelines needs to extend to the one to apply for the total digital environment including task environment, hardware and workstation. In order to achieve the research objectives, tremendous guidelines and technical papers related to evaluation issues of digital environment has been collected, analyzed and transformed to electric database forms and then built on database management system to retrieve the appropriate isues for the practical usage of evaluators-in-field.

Representative human models (RHMs), a group of digital human models which represent the people of the target population within a designated percentage (e.g., 95%), are used for ergonomic design and evaluation in virtual environments. The present study evaluated the grid approach, a RHM generation method, in terms of accommodation percentage. RHMs generated from the grid approach dramatically decreased the accommodation percentage of the target population as the number of anthropometric dimensions under consideration increased. For example, the accommodation percentages by RHMs generated by the grid approach were 95% for 3 key dimensions (selected among 10 anthropometric dimensions), 45% for 5 dimensions, and 10% for 10 dimensions. A standardized multiple regression analysis found that this decreasing accommodation percentage was caused by low correlations between key dimensions and other dimensions. The accommodation evaluation process used in the present study is applicable to evaluation of other RHM generation methods.