Jochen Nelles

Human-centered design of assistance systems for production planning and control: The role of the human in Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is an integrated approach that transfers available technologies and the concepts of digitization and networking from everyday life into the domain of industrial production. In this paper, the role of the human in Industry 4.0 is considered by means of a best practice approach. It shows what potential lies in the human-centered design of assistance systems in production planning and control. It involves the use of a tablet computer kitted with an Industry 4.0-compatible app on the shop-floor in a production environment. From empirical investigations, we have derived design recommendations on polarity and angular character height.

Human-Robot Synergy For Cooperative Robots

This paper presents two human-robot cooperative application scenarios of the project MeRoSy (Human-Robot Synergy) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The first scenario relates to the human-robot cooperation in an industrial application, while the second one refers to the robotic workplace assistance for people with disabilities. The presented scenarios reflect different aspects of human-robot interaction, among others different novel possibilities for human-robot interaction depending on different physical abilities of human co-worker. Beside the consideration of the human-robot cooperative technologies in two MeRoSy scenarios, this paper considers also the identification and classification of the ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) in the context of human-robot cooperation.

TAM Reloaded: A Technology Acceptance Model for Human-Robot Cooperation in Production Systems

The cooperation and collaboration between humans and robots is getting ever closer: While the human body was historically protected by a large safety distance, more and more organizations let robots and humans work hand-in-hand. This means that humans and robots are sharing physical space and are engaging in direct contact with each other. One factor that predicts successful human-robot interaction is the acceptance of the robot by the human. In general, only when a product covers human needs and expectations, it is perceived to be useful and hence accepted. This paper aims at presenting an acceptance model with regard to the cooperation between humans and robots that is based on prior acceptance models while also taking ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) into account.

Best-Practice Approach for a Solution-Oriented Technology Assessment: Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues in the Context of Human-Robot Collaboration

Future robots will process work tasks with a high degree of complexity even for small batch sizes in collaboration with the working person, simultaneously, and within a specified workplace. Due to the transformation from robots that are spatially and temporally separated from the working person and are programmed to execute tasks in a deterministic manner towards collaborative, adaptive lightweight robots, ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) should be considered. The purpose of this contribution is to determine how changing human-robot collaboration impacts technology. To this end potential ELSI problems and their possible causes and effects are identified and quantitatively analyzed based on the Aachen Model of Identification, Classification and Analysis of ethical, legal, and social Implications (AMICAI). Furthermore, the impacts of technology are identified and evaluated alongside potential risks, opportunities, and potentials of human-robot collaboration. This best-practice approach describes the results of applying AMICAI based on expert workshops focusing on the application example of a human-robot collaborative workplace in manufacturing.

User-Centered Design of Font Size and Polarity of Assistance Systems in Production Planning and Control

Due to a lack of responsiveness of unplanned incidents and deviations between planning and reality, manual overplanning in production planning systems should be reduced with the help of high resolving and consolidated data. In this context, one promising approach is a specific decision-making support of the production supervisor as a decision-maker by using action recommendations of an assistance system. With vertical human-machine interaction, the specific capabilities according to the Men-Are-Better-At/Machines-Are-Better-At (MABA/MABA) principle can be applied. In accordance with intelligent information visualization of the assistance system and a tablet-application for usage in a production hall environment, the research presented in this paper focuses on the investigation of the polarity and the font size respectively angular character height of the assistance system application regarding to task performance and mental effort. In an eye-tracking study, 15 participants were presented a search task on a touchscreen either with positive or negative polarity. In addition in each trial of the experiment the angular character height (16, 20, 24, 28 arcmin) was varied randomly. The results show that the mean search time can be improved significantly with an angular character height of 24 arcmin. Moreover, the results indicate that positive polarity leads to smaller average pupil diameter. Which is associated with a lower mental workload.

Ergonomic Visualization of Logistical Control Parameters for Flexible Production Planning and Control in Future Manufacturing Systems

The research presented in this paper focuses on modeling and visualization of logistical control parameters. In the developed application, the internal logistical control parameters cycle time, timeliness, inventory, and capacity were considered. A novel concept to visualize these parameters was developed on the basis of the well-known funnel model. The original model was enhanced by and compared to a further developed model. Our approach to visualize the internal logistical control parameters is based on a paddle-wheel model. An online survey with both models and different visualizations of the internal logistical control parameters was carried out to compare both models and the different visualizations. Both models are investigated with regard to comprehension and visual learning versus verbal learning. In the poster session, we will present further development of the paddle-wheel model to show the cause-effect relationship between the individual internal logistical control parameters and draw a comparison with the original funnel model.

Evaluation Metrics Regarding Human Well-Being and System Performance in Human-Robot Interaction – A Literature Review

This literature review provides an overview on evaluation metrics regarding human well-being and system performance in human-robot interaction. In this context a systematic literature search in the Web of Science and IEEE Xplore databases was carried out. Thus, 30 relevant contributions out of 3854 studies were analyzed by multistage filtering. To gain an overview on and compare the different approaches and results, the studies are summarized in tables according to the following criteria: author, year, title, task, study design, measurement methods, population, and results. The evaluation metrics presented in this contribution in principle can be divided into questionnaire-based surveys and psychophysiological measurement methods. In addition, the studies are classified into evaluation metrics for measuring well-being and performance.

Acceptance for Technological Solutions Targeted at the Mastery of Terrorist Attacks: Experience and Innovation

The authorities and emergency forces are challenged with increasing terrorism threats. The present paper presents the results from a workshop and interviews with experts for the neutralization of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) regarding the introduction of a robotic sensor system, which is developed within the project. On the one hand, we found great openness and enthusiasm for innovations and new technologies. On the other hand, experience plays a key role in the job of IED neutralization experts. This implies the need for training phases in case of the introduction of new systems in this domain.

Analysis of Stress and Strain in Head Based Control of Collaborative Robots—A Literature Review

The aim of this review was to provide an overview on possible fields where robots with head based control might be used. In that context another object was to investigate the effect of different neck movements on the user’s stress and strain. All in all, 13 studies were included in this review. Their quality was evaluated by a checklist. A total of ten studies showed useful for the further approach. Five dealt with application possibilities for head based control. Four studies assessed the muscle activity of the neck via sEMG and five studies used other measurements for the assessment of stress and strain. In conclusion, there are many possible application areas for head based control which can be further developed to support working persons as well as disabled people. The application of a robot controlled via head movements will be investigated in an upcoming study following the recommendations gathered through this research.