Extreme fitness: Applying ecophysics to reduce human stress in everyday extreme environments

It has been proposed that ergonomics and human factors (EHF) can be advanced by moving beyond old methodologies, by strengthening theoretical basis, and by making more use of artificial intelligence. Here, with the example of human remote operation of robots, i.e., teleoperation, it is argued that progress towards realising proposals for advancing EHF can be made by increasing reference to ecophysics. That is by increasing reference to science concerned with interactions between ecological systems and physical laws. In this document, human stress associated with remote operations work is situated in the broader context of extreme work environments. Those being environments that many people experience every workday, such as typical factories and offices, which are far from the natural environments in which humans evolved. With reference to ecological fitness, morphological fitness, and tripartite entropy, it is explained how application of ecophysics in EHF has potential to reduce human work stress.