A value sensitive design approach for designing AI-based worker assistance systems in manufacturing

Although artificial intelligence has been given an unprecedented amount of attention in both the public and academic domains in the last few years, its convergence with other transformative technologies like cloud computing, robotics, and augmented/virtual reality is predicted to exacerbate its impacts on society. The adoption and integration of these technologies within industry and manufacturing spaces is a fundamental part of what is called Industry 4.0, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The impacts of this paradigm shift on the human operators who continue to work alongside and symbiotically with these technologies in the industry bring with it novel ethical issues. Therefore, how to design these technologies for human values becomes the critical area of intervention. This paper takes up the case study of robotic AI-based assistance systems to explore the potential value implications that emerge due to current design practices and use. The design methodology known as Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is proposed as a sufficient starting point for designing these technologies for human values to address these issues

Context-dependent multimodal communication in human-robot collaboration

In the dynamic environment of human-robot collaboration, a key for boosting the efficiency of human workers is supporting them with context-dependent work instructions, delivered via communication modalities that suit the actual context. Workers, in turn, should be supported in controlling the robot or other components of the production system by using the most convenient modality, thus lifting the limitations of traditional interfaces as push buttons installed at fixed locations. We introduce a workflow for context-dependent multimodal communication in a collaborative work environment and present its implementation in a Human-Machine Interface Controller system

Akzeptanz autonomer Produktionsplanungs- und -steuerungssysteme: Unternehmensbefragung zur Verbreitung und Akzeptanz autonomer Steuerungssysteme

Producing individualized products leads to enormous planning complexity. As todayâs methods of production planning and control are not able to cope with these challenges anymore, researchers are working on entirely autonomous control systems. An extensive survey interviewing producing companies was conducted to investigate the usage of production planning and control systems as well as the acceptance of autonomous control systems. The results of this survey, which are described in the following contribution, are used to optimize the design and implementation of autonomous production planning and control systems