Understanding the kinematics of a simple machine
David Fallside, Marcel Adam Just · Visual Cognition · 1994
This paper describes how people visually scan and evaluate a simple machine (a pulley system) in motion. The research provides evidence of the use of a sampling process to inspect a deterministic dynamic system, and a re-checking procedure to compare the motions of two components that should constrain each other. The eyefixation patterns provide the empirical basis for a simulation model that accounts for several component processes in the evaluation of a machine. During the initial inspection, a broad spectrum of components is selected for evaluation by a stochastic sampling. After a potential inconsistency has been encountered, components are selected for evaluation by a more directed confirmation mode in which the suspect component is compared with a reference component. The components' motions are evaluated with respect to mechanical knowledge of the relative motion constraints between two interacting components. This strategy provides a method of decomposing what could otherwise be an extremely demanding kinematic evaluation into a sampling process and an evaluation with respect to rather small modules of mechanical knowledge.