Human-automation collaboration in manufacturing: identifying key implementation factors

Human-automation collaboration refers to the concept of human operators and intelligent automation working together interactively within the same workspace without conventional physical separation. This concept has commanded significant attention in manufacturing because of the potential applications, such as the installation of large sub-assemblies. However, the key human factors relevant to human-automation collaboration have not yet been fully investigated. To maximise effective implementation and reduce development costs for future projects these factors need to be examined. In this paper, a collection of human factors likely to influence human-automation collaboration are identified from current literature. To test the validity of these and explore further factors associated with implementation success, different types of production processes in terms of stage of maturity are being explored via industrial case studies from the project’s stakeholders. Data was collected through a series of semi-structured interviews with shop floor operators, engineers, system designers and management personnel

The development of a Human Factors Readiness Level tool for implementing industrial human-robot collaboration

The concept of industrial human-robot collaboration (HRC) is becoming increasingly attractive as a means for enhancing manufacturing productivity and product. However, due to traditional preventive health and safety standards, there have been few operational examples of true HRC, so it has not been possible to explore the organisational human factors that need to be considered by manufacturing organisations to realise the benefits of industrial HRC until recently. Charalambous, Fletcher and Webb (2015) made the first attempt to identify the key organisational human factors for the successful implementation of industrial HRC through an industrial exploratory case study. This work enabled (i) development of a theoretical framework of key organisational human factors relevant to industrial HRC and (ii) identification of these factors as enablers or barriers. Although identifying the key organisational human factors (HF) was an important step, it presented a crucial question: when should practitioners involved in HRC design and implementation consider these factors? New industrial processes are typically designed and implemented using a maturity or readiness evaluation system, but these do not incorporate of or link to any formal considerations of HF. The aim of this paper is to expand on the previous findings and link the key human factors in the theoretical framework directly to a recognised industrial maturity readiness level system to develop a new Human Factors Readiness Level (HFRL) tool for system design practitioners to optimise successful implementation of industrial HRC

THE EXCHANGE: Curating Authenticity + Interaction

For a physical space to have an emotional impact on those who experience it, we must consider the connection and relationship between objects and experience, and how people make individual connections to insentient places. It is this symbiotic relationship that allows a building or space to attain a “soul”. Through the adaptive re-use of a Richmond, Virginia building, this thesis project explores strategies of staging physical interaction and organic experiences through art and culture in the context of a mixed-use niche hotel

Big ideas on a small scale

Through their work in microfluidics, Aaron Wheeler and his colleagues apply their research to real world problems

“The Torture of Colonization and the Holocaust: Multidirectional Memory in The Nature of Blood”

In this paper, I read Caryl Phillips’s 1997 post-colonial The Nature of Blood as a novel that exemplifies Michael Rothberg’s theory of “multidirectional memory.” Rothberg’s theory, which argues against the dominant competitive model of memory in the United States, asserts that memory is a “productive, intercultural dynamic” (Rothberg 3). In other words, memories of different groups of people, specifically African-Americans and Holocaust survivors in his essay, are intertwined and inform each other in a modern setting. Phillips’s novel depicts a relationship between the Holocaust and colonization through the use of multiple narratives interwoven throughout the novel. Those narratives begin with the Stern family, specifically Eva Stern, a survivor of a Nazi death camp who eventually commits suicide, and Eva’s uncle Stephan, a man who abandoned his family in order to join Israel and who eventually regrets his decision. The novel also explores other lives: Othello, the Moor of Shakespeare’s Othello before the events of the play during the early modern period; three Jews falsely accused of the murder of a Christian boy in the town of Portobuffole during the 15th century; Malka, a struggling Ethiopian Jew in Israel during Operation Solomon in 1991. The painful and bloody similarities in the relationship between the Holocaust and colonization are created through the nonlinearity of time and the refutation of modernity, which combine to depict the still ongoing consequences of genocide and colonization. The invalidation of modernity, which is the notion that humanity is forever moving toward a better civilized future, is significant because modernity is a lie despite some people’s belief otherwise. The nonlinearity is evidenced through the novel’s traversing of multiple historical periods. As Rothberg notes, it constellates these different histories in order to emphasize their commonalities. This paper extends this insight by focusing on the centuries of othering described in the novel that have resulted in the tragic relationship they share and the involvement of canonized works such as Shakespeare’s plays and The Diary of Anne Frank. The Nazis were not the first people to decide that Jews needed to be isolated and killed, though that does not make Eva’s story any less disheartening. Stephan was not the first Jewish man trying to achieve something better for his people and, ignoring any possible success or failure on the matter, he is unable to reap any potential rewards for his sacrifices. Othello was destroyed in Shakespeare’s play, but the novel describes his treatment and the internalized racism that led to those fateful events. The three Jews were killed senselessly because of a rumor despite doing everything in their power to survive. Malka, the youngest character in a temporal sense, is merely the latest depiction of the combined racism and anti-Semitism that has ruled the European world for centuries. If modernity were true, then the treatment of all of these characters would improve over linear time and the presence of racism and anti-Semitism would vastly decrease; however, that is not the case. All of these characters also survive a tragedy and/or assimilate if the dominant culture is to be believed; however, the novel demonstrates how monstrously untrue that lie is in actuality

International, National, and Local Notions of the Public Library: An extended case study in Namibia

This dissertation is a study of library use in a poor neighborhood in Windhoek, Namibia, to understand the diffusion of public libraries around the world. I used a sociological approach and the Extended Case Method (Burawoy, 1991; 1998). Two theories framed the research: World Society Theory (Meyer et al. 1997) and New Institutional Theory (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991). World Society Theory was developed from evidence of similarities in governmental, health and educational organizations globally that demonstrates the growth of a world culture based on a rationalistic and scientific approach to knowledge. The findings show that international notions of public libraries do influence national and local notions of them. Local and national notions of the library also have influence, however, and the libraries are ultimately an amalgamation of local and international notions, reflecting in part the needs of the community for education and self-development