961 research outputs found

    Designing human-robot collaborations in industry 4.0: explorative case studies

    Get PDF

    Collaborative Robots and Tangled Passages of Tactile-Affects

    Get PDF
    Collaborative robots are increasingly entering industrial contexts and workflows. These contexts are not just locations for production, they are vibrant social and sensory environments. For better or for worse their entry brings potential to reorganize established tactile and affective dynamics that encompass production processes. There is still much to be learned about these highly contextual and complex dynamics in HRI research and the design of industrial robotics; common approaches in industrial collaborative robotics are restricted to evaluating ‘effective interface design’ whereas methods that seek to measure ‘affective touch’ have limited application to these industrial domains. This paper offers an extended analytical framework and methodological approach to deepen understandings of affect and touch beyond emotional responses to direct human-robot interactions. These distinct contributions are grounded in fieldwork in a glass factory with newly installed collaborative robots. They are illustrated through an ethnographic narrative that traces the emergence and circulation of affect, across material, experiential and social planes. Beyond this single case ‘tangled passages of tactile-affects’ is offered as novel and valuable concept, that is distinct from the notion of ‘affective touch’, and holds potential to generate holistic and nuanced understandings of how human experiences can be affected by the introduction of new robots in ‘the wild’

    Preparing for Industrial Collaborative Robots: A Literature Review of Technology Readiness and Acceptance Models

    Get PDF
    This item is only available electronically.Collaborative robots (cobots) are an emerging technology that are increasingly being introduced into organisations. However, research investigating employee attitudes towards, or assessment of factors predicting acceptance of cobots is limited. A literature review was conducted to identify reliable and parsimonious models of technology acceptance that would hold relevance when applied to cobots. Understanding and facilitating employee acceptance of such technology is important if the improved productivity, job satisfaction and cost savings associated with its implementation are to be achieved. The Technology Readiness Index (Parasuraman, 2000) and Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989) were considered most appropriate as a starting point to empirically explore cobot acceptance.Thesis (M.Psych(Organisational & Human Factors)) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 201

    Trust in Construction AI-Powered Collaborative Robots: A Qualitative Empirical Analysis

    Full text link
    Construction technology researchers and forward-thinking companies are experimenting with collaborative robots (aka cobots), powered by artificial intelligence (AI), to explore various automation scenarios as part of the digital transformation of the industry. Intelligent cobots are expected to be the dominant type of robots in the future of work in construction. However, the black-box nature of AI-powered cobots and unknown technical and psychological aspects of introducing them to job sites are precursors to trust challenges. By analyzing the results of semi-structured interviews with construction practitioners using grounded theory, this paper investigates the characteristics of trustworthy AI-powered cobots in construction. The study found that while the key trust factors identified in a systematic literature review -- conducted previously by the authors -- resonated with the field experts and end users, other factors such as financial considerations and the uncertainty associated with change were also significant barriers against trusting AI-powered cobots in construction.Comment: 2023 ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering (I3CE

    A Concept for User-Centered Delegation of Abstract High-Level Tasks to Cobots for Flexible Lot Sizes

    Full text link
    Technical advances in collaborative robots (cobots) are making them increasingly attractive to companies. However, many human operators are not trained to program complex machines. Instead, humans are used to communicating with each other on a task-based level rather than through specific instructions, as is common with machines. The gap between low-level instruction-based and high-level task-based communication leads to low values for usability scores of teach pendant programming. As a solution, we propose a task-based interaction concept that allows human operators to delegate a complex task to a machine without programming by specifying a task via triplets. The concept is based on task decomposition and a reasoning system using a cognitive architecture. The approach is evaluated in an industrial use case where mineral cast basins have to be sanded by a cobot in a crafts enterprise
    • …
    corecore