An AR Tool to Support Warehouse Operations in the Context of Industry 4.0

Augmented Reality (AR) is one of the leading technologies of the Industry 4.0 revolution, offering innovative interfaces to promote the diffusion of digital contents into industrial processes, thanks to flexible and robust solutions and cost-effective devices. In this context, this paper explores the adoption of AR in industrial logistics where several open issues still discourage its effective use in everyday scenarios. After a review of objectives, approaches and technics of AR integration in logistics operations, the paper presents a framework to identify goods in a warehouse, retrieve data relative to the package, display info to the user to drive operations. The approach aims at easing and speeding up the activity of the warehouseman to identify goods, check the relative information and to put each good on the correct shelf. A prototypal application was developed within the Unity platform and integrated with the company ERP system to manage data on the products and retrieve images of the identification labels. A real use case involving a primary company producing agricultural tractors is proposed to test usability of the prototype. Results showed that the developed application allows relevant benefits in terms of process effectiveness, error prevention, aiming at reducing the operator mental workload

Ux in ar-supported industrial human–robot collaborative tasks: A systematic review

The fourth industrial revolution is promoting the Operator 4.0 paradigm, originating from a renovated attention towards human factors, growingly involved in the design of modern, human-centered processes. New technologies, such as augmented reality or collaborative robotics are thus increasingly studied and progressively applied to solve the modern operators’ needs. Human-centered design approaches can help to identify user’s needs and functional requirements, solving usability issues, or reducing cognitive or physical stress. The paper reviews the recent literature on augmented reality-supported collaborative robotics from a human-centered perspective. To this end, the study analyzed 21 papers selected after a quality assessment procedure and remarks the poor adoption of user-centered approaches and methodologies to drive the development of human-centered augmented reality applications to promote an efficient collaboration between humans and robots. To remedy this deficiency, the paper ultimately proposes a structured framework driven by User eXperience approaches to design augmented reality interfaces by encompassing previous research works. Future developments are discussed, stimulating fruitful reflections and a decisive standardization process

Human-Centric Design of Automated Production Lines Using Virtual Reality Tools and Human Data Analysis

The 4.0 revolution is leading to increasingly automated, flexible, and intelligent manufacturing systems that require greater complexity to manage during maintenance and process control. In this context the optimization of the human-machine interaction plays a crucial important role in the design of modern industrial systems. Virtual Reality (VR) offers realistic simulation environments where users can be involved to replicate specific human tasks, detecting and solving problems before they occur. The paper proposes a human-centric digital design methodology that integrates VR technologies with human data analysis tools to support the design or redesign of complex industrial systems. Different wearable devices have been used to collect data about physical and mental user conditions to provide an early assessment of the operators’ workload, while comparing different design solutions into the virtual space. An industrial use case related to the redesign of packaging automated machines was used to validate the proposed method and tools: a preliminary correlation between physiological parameters and machines interactions was found

UX assessment strategy to identify potential stressful conditions for workers

The European Commission defined the new concept of Industry 5.0 meaning a more human-centric, resilient, and sustainable approach for the design of industrial systems and operations. A deep understanding of the work environment and organization is important to start analysing the working conditions and the resulting User eXperience (UX) of the operators. Also, the knowledge about users’ needs and ergonomics is fundamental to optimize the workers’ wellbeing, working conditions, and industrial results. In this context, the paper presents a strategy to effectively assess the UX of workers to promote human-centric vision of manufacturing sites, enhancing the overall sustainability of the modern factories. A set of non-invasive wearable devices is used to monitor human activities and collect physiological parameters, as well as questionnaires to gather subjective self-assessment. This set-up was applied to virtual reality (VR) simulation, replicating heavy duty work sequence tasks that took place in an oil and gas pipes manufacturing site. This approach allowed the identification of possible stressful conditions for the operator, from physical and mental perspectives, which may compromise the performance. This research was funded by the European Community's HORIZON 2020 programme under grant agreement No. 958303 (PENELOPE)

A preliminary experimental study on the workers’ workload assessment to design industrial products and processes

The human‐centered design (HCD) approach places humans at the center of design in order to improve both products and processes, and to give users an effective, efficient and satisfy-ing interactive experience. In industrial design and engineering, HCD is very useful in helping to achieve the novel Industry 5.0 concept, based on improving workers’ wellbeing by providing prosperity beyond jobs and growth, while respecting the production limits of the planet as recently promoted by the European Commission. In this context, the paper proposes an ergonomic assessment method based on the analysis of the workers’ workload to support the design of industrial products and processes. This allows the simultaneous analysis of the physical and cognitive workload of operators while performing their tasks during their shift. The method uses a minimum set of non‐invasive wearable devices to monitor human activity and physiological parameters, in addition to questionnaires for subjective self‐assessment. The method has been preliminarily tested on a real industrial case in order to demonstrate how it can help companies to support the design of optimized products and processes promoting the workers’ wellbeing

A comprehensive UX index to evaluate industrial tasks from a human-centered perspective

Recent advances in physiological monitoring devices have supported the diffusion of a human-centric approach also within industrial contexts, where often severe working conditions limit the analysis of the operators’ User eXperience (UX). Several methodologies have been presented to the scientific community to assess the overall UX of workers performing industrial operations. These methodologies have also tried to encompass the diverse aspects of the physiological response (e.g., mental workload, stress conditions and postural overloads). The current study aims to refine a unique and comprehensive UX index to identify the specific causes of the user discomfort in advance and to optimize the overall system design. A full set of non-invasive wearable devices was applied to a virtual reality (VR) simulation while performing manual operations to collect relevant physiological parameters and to finally assess the overall UX. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed index in anticipating the operator's critical conditions by specifying the possible causes of the ergonomic discomfort. Future works will focus on investigating the theoretical foundation of proposed solution and on providing a statistical validation on a larger population