ECHO: a multimodal workstation for ordinary and extra-ordinary human computer interaction

The ECHO (extraordinary computer human operation) project being carried out in conjunction with GEC Avionics, is concerned with the development of a multimodal workstation for `ordinary´ and `extra-ordinary´ human computer interaction. The main themes of the project are the increase of both input and output bandwidth by providing alternative input/output mechanisms for the user; the incorporation of task-specific and user-specific knowledge into applications in order to increase efficiency; the graceful handling of failure conditions; and investigation into `extra-ordinary´ situations such as high instantaneous workloads. The project will develop a demonstrator workstation based on the above concepts and will investigate the use of this workstation in appropriate application areas. A major theme of the project is the hypothesis that any human being can face instances of impairment caused by their environment