Ethics and the killer robot

Ethics and the killer robo

Managing the lifecycle of your robot

‘Robot’ for this paper is assumed to be a cognitive device, acting as a co-worker within a team of human workers: a mobile device, with a degree of autonomy, interchangeable prostheses, interacting freely with surrounding humans, in a civilian environment. An exemplar lifecycle is the MoD’s CADMID lifecycle., and the paper concentrates on the In-service phase, for reasons of space. The approach is from a management perspective; a road-map is provided to acquire a robot, to put it to work, and to support both it and the team during its in-service phase. The emphasis is on what management needs to consider and the structures that need to be in place in order to run this process

Global drivers, sustainable manufacturing and systems ergonomics

This paper briefly explores the expected impact of the ‘Global Drivers’ (such as population demographics, food security; energy security; community security and safety), and the role of sustainability engineering in mitigating the potential effects of these Global Drivers. The message of the paper is that sustainability requires a significant input from Ergonomics/Human Factors, but the profession needs some expansion in its thinking in order to make this contribution. Creating a future sustainable world in which people experience an acceptable way of life will not happen without a large input from manufacturing industry into all the Global Drivers, both in delivering products that meet sustainability criteria (such as durability, reliability, minimised material requirement and low energy consumption), and in developing sustainable processes to deliver products for sustainability (such as minimum waste, minimum emissions and low energy consumption). Appropriate changes are already being implemented in manufacturing industry, including new business models, new jobs and new skills. Considerable high-level planning around the world is in progress and is bringing about these changes; for example, there is the US ‘Advanced Manufacturing National Program’ (AMNP)’, the German ‘Industrie 4.0’ plan, the French plan ‘la nouvelle France industrielle’ and the UK Foresight publications on the ‘Future of Manufacturing’. All of these activities recognise the central part that humans will continue to play in the new manufacturing paradigms; however, they do not discuss many of the issues that systems ergonomics professionals acknowledge. This paper discusses a number of these issues, highlighting the need for some new thinking and knowledge capture by systems ergonomics professionals. Among these are ethical issues, job content and skills issues. Towards the end, there is a summary of knowledge extensions considered necessary in order that systems ergonomists can be fully effective in this new environment, together with suggestions for the means to acquire and disseminate the knowledge extensions

Job design for manufacturing in an era of sustainability

The paper explores the changes that are likely to be necessary as the world moves to a more sustainable way of life. When these changes are added to the development of the Internet of Things, in which it is envisaged that devices with some level of embedded intelligence will communicate with each other, as will intelligent services, it appears that our current ways of conducting job design may be found wanting. The principles of socio-technical design will still apply; how these principles will necessarily be extended is the subject of this paper; how to include aspects of sustainability, the need to train for resilience, etc

Effective and efficient preparation for the unforeseeable

This paper hypothesizes that a System-of-Systems (SoS) that is not fit-for-purpose is so because it cannot implement the correct, timely and complete transfers of Material, Energy and/or Information (MEI) between its constituents and with its external environment that are necessary to achieve a particular result. This research addresses the problem of maintaining a SoS fit-for-purpose after unpredictable changes in operation, composition or external factors by creating a method, implemented as an engineering process and supported by an analysis technique to enhance the affordance {“Features that provide the potential for interaction by “Affording the ability to do something” [1]} of SoS constituents for MEI transfer and reveal potential undesirable transfers

Using the role matrix technique to identify organisational changes: a practical study within London Underground escalators maintenance service

Increasing financial and service demand pressures drives the London Underground maintenance business to shift its focus from reactive to proactive maintenance. Part of the strategy is to enhance the current condition monitoring capability through the introduction of intelligent remote condition monitoring systems that could provide advisory information regarding the optimum time to undertake maintenance interventions. In this paper we present a case study that utilizes the Role Matrix Technique to identify the organisational challenges associated with the implementation of a health and prognostic assessment system, which uses remote condition monitoring data, within the London Underground escalator maintenance service