The Rapid Prototyping Area is used for software development where teams of computer scientists and engineers have access to a number of hardware and software tools to develop, test, evaluate, and modify human-computer-interface (HCI) and workstation design concepts. These tools are used to support our aviation human factors researchers in their quest to better understand the relationship between man and machine. This capability is further enhanced by the our ability to then integrate these prototypes into real-time simulated operational scenarios.
The Rapid Prototyping Area contains Digital UNIX, Windows NT, and SUN UNIX platforms. The NT workstation has a HP Scanjet 4c flatbed scanner. The area is equipped with a variety of commercial software tools such Caere's OmniPage OCR, Corel's Photo-Paint, LabView, SATORI, and ISA/Orthogon's ODS Toolbox. All of these tools support the design, testing and verification and validation of user-interfaces. As previously noted, products in the form of developed prototypes can be quickly and easily integrated into real-time simulated operational scenarios for further development, test, and evaluation.