With the advantages of a growing computer and electronics industry, and the continually declining cost of developing new technologies, HMI design is entering a new stage. Each upgrade enables users to operate machine and control applications better using ever-more simple and accurate methods, thereby improving productivity.
Despite recent advancements in industrial HMIs, such as expanded displays, accelerated communication speeds and other powerful features, their designs and interactivity means there is still room for improvement in terms of satisfying consumer demands. So what types of HMI designs and functionalities do consumers require? And what are the reasons these HMIs will become mainstream?
Just like other HMI applications, such as those in the automobile, entertainment, electronics, medical equipment, banking and service industries, industrial HMI applications have matured. Indeed, following the infiltration of IIoT on the factory floor, HMI technology has become essential to the fulfilment of intelligent production and the integration of system functions.
With this trend, alongside ever-growing demand for more features that allow easy and convenient access to diverse data, it becomes necessary to upgrade and enhance HMIs accordingly. Particularly for cloud servers collecting big data, how is it possible to improve HMIs so they realise more effective data feedback? This is a crucial issue that contemporary users hope to solve. In addition, the increasing prevalence of consumer electronics in recent years has sparked demand for more intuitive machine communication interfaces.
In touch with reality
In response, most of the industrial sector has begun equipping traditional control equipment with touchscreen technology to enhance the integration of HMIs into the control workflow. And the realisation of intelligence continues to evolve. In a number of high-end industrial sectors, cutting-edge AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) technologies now have full integration with the manufacturing process to enable remote monitoring and machine control.
Although emerging technologies like AR and VR have endless potential for industrial applications, to optimise and streamline the process workflow, most factories still prefer using HMIs with physical control units for human-machine interaction. Buttons on machines and equipment are still evident everywhere in factories.
Most modern electronic products also continue to feature a variety of buttons, even though some may be purely decorative. This demonstrates that people still rely on the physical sensation of administering a control action. Pushbuttons are ideal for providing tactile feedback because they give a physical confirmation of a key press that virtual buttons cannot provide. Furthermore, virtual buttons do not have a fixed position and, due to deployment in close proximity to other on-screen menus, input errors are common. As a result, the replacement of physical buttons with virtual buttons on industrial production lines will almost certainly lead to an increase in error incidence rate.
Physical buttons are clearly still required for industrial HMI designs and, moving forward, Advantech believes that the emergence of new technologies will not lead to the sacrifice of human-machine interaction supported by tactile feedback.
Physical buttons move towards integration
Successful HMI designers plainly need to consider both the user experience and product features to attract consumers. That is why touchscreen HMIs with a small number of physical buttons are already widespread. Such integrative designs not only reduce a product’s weight for a more fashionable aesthetic, but also increase usage flexibility. The touchscreen HMI enables users to navigate the device using a single screen instead of numerous pre-configured buttons that take up space. From this premise, it is possible to infer that, in the next 5 to 10 years, integrated designs will dominate the industrial HMI market.
Advantech, a provider of advanced industrial HMI solutions, has developed a new HMI product, SPC-800, that follows recent trends for a touchscreen interface combined with a few physical buttons. This integration of the two interface types optimises operational safety and ensures efficient processing.
As the development history of HMIs shows, blindly following trends will not yield success; instead, innovating existing mainstream trends is the best way of creating real opportunities. For instance, because the configuration of physical buttons is generally to only perform a single function, functional scalability is quite limited. Advantech’s SPC-800 overcomes this disadvantage with the inclusion of an integrated customisable expansion unit for configuring physical buttons according to usage requirements. With this modular function expansion unit, most physical buttons and electronic components can be custom-configured.Regarding the long-term development of HMIs, in order to stand out from all the rapidly developing technologies in today’s highly competitive market, product designers must consider the ever-changing demands of customers. Moving forward, Advantech’s HMI products will incorporate more technologies that will enable endless possibilities in terms of human-machine interaction. Perhaps one day, when people are no longer reliant on sensorial feedback from machinery, HMI development will expand into new areas, beyond everyone’s wildest imagination.
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