An Experimental Study on Core Characteristics of Skills in Changing Technological Society

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The present research attempted to clarify the core characteristics of skills in recent assembly lines of beer production company. Based on our preliminary investigation of recent status of atomization of assembly works, final inspection tasks of a beer production company was focused on. The final inspection task is one of the most remarkable tasks that are difficult to be automatized even in Japan. The inspection workers have to detect several kinds of very invisible spots and residues in beer bottles conveyed around 280 bottles per minute. This characteristics is a course of fatigue and inhibition of automatization.Eye movements of an skilled inspection worker were recorded by NACIV on a real assembly line and alyzed. The results showed that mean fixation duration is around 175msec. This value is about a half of fixation duration of normal visual tasks and seems marginal one. This extremely high speed visual inspection / search is supported by the following two factors. The first one is that skilled inspectors have larger useful field of view. The second one is that motion of invisible spots (targets) play a facilitatory role for detection. This is based on statements of skilled inspectors. This is one more important finding. So, the extremely high speed inspection with marginally short fixation duration is performed through larger useful field of view and an ability to use the facilitatory motion of targets.These findings give some cues to clarify visual skill of information processing in basic research, and on the other hand, give some cues to solve a problem of fatigue in inspection tasks in applied research.