The perception of visual information is essential in satisfactory control tracking performance. Modern interface technologies such as stereoscopic three-dimensional displays allow for a more ecological representation of three-dimensional surroundings in a remote teleoperative environment without natural binocular vision. However, the effects such interfaces have on current human controller models are unknown yet desired from a cybernetic perspective. This paper presents the work to identify and quantify manual control behavior in depth control tracking tasks with stereoscopic vision. A human-in-the-loop experiment was conducted in two different environments with twenty four participants of which sixteen were inexperienced stereoscopic display users and eight were frequent users. Four different display conditions were tested; a baseline flat-plane view and three depth views with varying stereopsis. The change of predominantly studied flat-plane control tasks to depth tracking tasks with the considered stereoscopic display settings was found to strongly affect human capability to perform control tasks. The control-theoretic approach to identify and quantify manual control behavior in depth tracking tasks helps to extend current knowledge by integration of human behavior and adaption to modern system’s three-dimensional interfaces.

Mountain ranges all over Earth have long been tourist attractions for their monumental size, beautiful nature, clean air and possible leisure activities. Though attractive, mountain activities may form a threat to human safety. Search and rescue (SAR) teams are constantly stand-by and often have multiple rescue sorties per day. These missions are slow and dangerous for the involved personnel. In extremely rare cases rescue missions use helicopters for search by pilot eyesight. These mission types on average cost e3, 300 per hour, are dangerous for personnel, have a small endurance and have a large downtime. There is a clear need to improve effectiveness and safety of these rescue missions...