Field personnel, such as
bridge inspectors, crane operators and structural welders, often operate in
harsh environments
where their hands must be free for personal safety or
equipment operation. In these situations, the efficiency and quality of field
operations are limited by the operator’s difficulties in accessing information
and understanding the environment. Research prototype field support solutions
were designed for operations relevant to engineers in bridge inspection,
offshore oil platform crane operation, and ship welding
supervision. Computing
support in these areas required more than a desktop application on a portable
computer. A usercentred approach was used in order to concentrate design on the
specific hardware and software needs dictated by the field situation and the
operating personnel. For these three projects, the focus was on the user
interface, operations environment visualisation, and wireless communication,
respectively. This paper describes the requirements and prototyping of each of
these three field support
computers. As these projects are all still works in
progress, opportunities for future development and improvement are also
discussed.