Human factors and ergonomics considerations in the industrial metaverse

The industrial metaverse is a new and emerging topic in smart manufacturing, extending the previous Industry 4.0 concept of cyber-physical systems in manufacturing. The trend is in its early phase, and the definition of the concept is still forming. The goal of this paper is to study the industrial metaverse from the human factors and ergonomics (HF/E) point of view to ensure that the related design and development efforts have a holistic approach. Three industrial metaverse work scenarios were created and assessed from the HF/E point of view. Based on the scenario analysis, new opportunities and challenges were identified related to user experience, usability, usefulness, user acceptance, ergonomics, safety and ethics. This paper is one of the first to start the HF/E discussion related to the metaverse, and its findings can be used both by the research community and the industry when stepping into the era of the industrial metaverse.</p

A solution for actors' viewpoints representation with collaborative product development

As product complexity and marketing competition increase, a collaborative product development is necessary for companies which develop high quality products in short lead-times. To support product actors from different fields, disciplines, and locations, wishing to exchange and share information, the representation of the actors' viewpoints is the underlying requirement of the collaborative product development. The actors' viewpoints approach was designed to provide an organisational framework following the actors' perspectives in the collaboration, and their relationships, could be explicitly gathered and formatted. The approach acknowledges the inevitability of multiple integration of product information as different views, promotes gathering of actors' interests, and encourages retrieved adequate information while providing support for integration through PLM and/or SCM collaboration. In this paper, a solution for neutral viewpoints representation is proposed. The product, process, and organisation information models are seriatim discussed. A series of issues referring to the viewpoints representation are discussed in detail. Based on XML standard, taking cyclone vessel as an example, an application case of part of product information modelling is stated.Comment: ISBN: 2-287-48363-

Review of Health Examination Surveys in Europe

Information on the health, health risks and use of health services and medicines of the population are needed for planning and evaluating health policies and health care. Typical data sources for health information are various registers, such as mortality registers for total and cause-specific mortality and population surveys, which provide a cross-section of health and its determinants in the population. Different data sources provide information on different aspects of health, and therefore they are largely complementary

Virtual prototyping in evaluation of human factors and ergonomics of human-machine systems

Industrial work is evolving due to the digitalisation and complexity of the systems. This creates challenges for workers in performing their work tasks well, and with their well-being considered. These challenges can be addressed by investing in improving issues in human factors/ergonomics (HFE) during the design of humanmachine systems. In recent years, the use of virtual prototyping (VP) has increased in the product development process due to the matured and low-cost technologies. In addition, VP has proven to be useful in the design of work systems targeted at users. However, the design and use of virtual prototypes to support HFE evaluation is not a simple task. It is important to enhance the understanding of this topic, and to adopt systematic approaches in the use of VP in HFE evaluation.The goal of the thesis is to understand how to use VP in HFE evaluations when designing human-machine systems. The research of this thesis belongs to the field of HFE but it also contributes to the human-computer interaction (HCI) discipline by enhancing the understanding of digitalization and emerging new technologies in a work context. A case study approach was adopted for the research: six case studies were investigated and all of them were related to VP use in the evaluation of HFE. Case studies included topics such as suitability of virtual prototypes to support HFE evaluation, benefits and challenges of the use of VP in HFE evaluation, a systematic preparation of VP design reviews, and systematic deployment of VP in companies. Mainly qualitative data analyses were used, but quantitative measures were also applied.The thesis identifies critical issues related to VP use in HFE evaluation, and proposes an HFE/VP model. The model guides design engineers and research scientists through the critical steps when using VP in HFE evaluation. It supports the deployment of VP for company use, and provides instructions for designing VP systems to be used in HFE evaluation. The model proposes an HFE approach that can be adopted during VP. In addition, the understanding of key benefits and challenges of the use of VP in HFE evaluation are identified.This thesis contributes to both the research community and industry: the HFE/VP model includes practical and theoretical contributions that can be used when researchers are studying the use of virtual prototypes, and in industrial companies during product development. In research, the contribution of this thesis is in the intersection of the research fields of HFE/HCI and virtual reality