Central Control Software: An Open-Source Platform for Seamless Integration of Experimental Setup in Human-Centered Research Applications

Human-centred research involving advanced technological solutions is increasingly utilizing complex multi-modal systems. This often necessitates the simultaneous use of various modules, making their concurrent management challenging and underscoring the need for flexible, modular, and high-performance platforms to facilitate their integration. This paper presents the end-to-end development of Central Control Software (CCS), a novel open-source platform that serves as a central hub for seamless integration of various technological equipment, such as hardware devices or software applications. CCS is designed to facilitate the integration of additional modules without affecting the overall functionality due to its modular architecture while keeping the high-level components easily usable by a wide and heterogeneous spectrum of users. The platform has been systematically tested to validate its performance in terms of real-time functioning, reliability, efficiency in resource consumption, scalability with increasing workload, and stability over extended operational periods in different experimental conditions, with varying numbers of connected modules and duration of recording. Moreover, the system was tested for its degree of usability on twenty users with different backgrounds, i.e., ten experts (technical users) and ten non-experts (non-technical users). Participants' performance was analysed with quantitative measurements and their scores to the System Usability Scale. Results confirmed the fulfillment of the identified requirements and highlighted a high usability score (around 90/100) without statistically significant differences between the two groups, suggesting that it can be easily used by researchers with different backgrounds.