For an establishment of a skill evaluation method for human support systems, development of an estimating equation of the machine operational skill is presented. Factors of the eye movement such as frequency, velocity, and moving distance of saccade were computed using the developed eye gaze measurement system, and the eye movement features were determined from these factors. The estimating equation was derived through an outlier test (to eliminate nonstandard data) and a principal component analysis (to find dominant components). Using a cooperative carrying task (cc-task) simulator, the eye movement and operational data of the machine operators were recorded, and effectiveness of the derived estimating equation was investigated. As a result, it was confirmed that the estimating equation was effective strongly against actual simple skill levels ( ). In addition, effects of internal condition such as fatigue and stress on the estimating equation were analyzed. Using heart rate (HR) and coefficient of variation of R-R interval ( ). Correlation analysis between these biosignal indexes and the estimating equation of operational skill found that the equation reflected effects of stress and fatigue, although the equation could estimate the skill level adequately. 1. Introduction With the development of science and technology in several decades, we have had more opportunities to operate various types of machines in our daily life. In order to elicit high performance of such machines, however, the users have to strive for mastery of the operation, and much time and effort are frequently needed. With that in mind, a concept of Human Adaptive Mechatronics (HAM) [1–3], which is an intelligent mechatronics to help the mastery of the user’s operation, was presented. Under the project, various kinds of system design theories and technologies for HAM, that changes its dynamic characteristics and the supporting strategies adaptively to the status of individual user in order to enhance the performance of whole human-machine system, have been studied [4–6]. The following two main functions are required to realize HAM: quantification of skill level of users and adaptive human-assisting mechanism according to the skill level. Researches about the quantification of skills, analyses of vehicle control characteristics of drivers or pilots [7, 8], studies concerning cognitive skill for human-computer interface interaction [9], and researches on perceptual skill on video game [10] are known. On the other hand, in order to design an adaptive human-assisting mechanism, a
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