Assistive technologies at home and in the workplace—a field of research for exercise science and human movement science

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments

Funk

Abele

et al. 2014

Self Cite

Context-aware assistive systems (CAAS) have become ubiquitous in cars or smartphones but not in industrial work contexts: while there are systems controlling work results, context-specific assistance during the processes is hardly offered. As a result production workers still have to rely on their skills and expertise. While un-impaired workers may cope well with this situation, elderly or impaired persons in production environments need context-sensitive assistance.The contribution of the research presented here is three-fold:(1) We provide a framework for context-aware assistive systems in production environments. These systems are based on motion recognition and use projection and elements from game design (gamification) to augment work. (2) Based on this framework we describe a prototype with respect to both the physical and the software implementation.(3) We present the results of a study with impaired workers and quantifying the effects of the augmentations on work speed and quality.

Section: Work Of Elderly and Impaired Personsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Context-aware assistive systems at the workplace

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments

Funk

Abele

et al. 2014

Self Cite

“…In our research we have studied the requirements for future ASiPE that address the needs of cognitively impaired persons more aptly [2,3,4]. Systems being able to take into account both the context and the user in real time would offer better assistance, more security and potentially more fun.…”

Section: Requirementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assistive system experiment designer ASED

Proceedings of the 14th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

Schmidt

Hörz

et al. 2012

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This paper introduces the toolkit ASED: Assistive System Experiment Designer. Combining a specially constructed assembly table and new software it allows measuring the performance of impaired persons when using assistive systems for production environments (ASiPE). The ASiPE design tested using ASED transgresses the state of the art by three enhancements. With the help of ASED we are able to quantify and rank their effects on work quality and performance. The ASED toolkit, however, is not confined to the design tested but can be used for the experimental analysis of every kind of manual process.

“…• To save labor costs industrial countries try to outsource manual tasks to sheltered work organizations in regional proximity so the tasks are performed by workers with disabilities or impairments. • Due to demographic change the average age of workers in European countries is rising, so the number of workers with impairments resulting from the normal ageing process increases [2]. These developments have constituted the need for augmented Assistive systems in production environments (aASiPE) that provide cognitive assistance for production workers -and especially for impaired or elderly workers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Augmented manufacturing

Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments

Schmidt

Hörz

2013

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Production work requires a high level of awareness and especially manual assembly work is prone to human errors. At the same time the demand for manual assembly grows. Assistive systems in production environments (ASiPE) have to be augmented to improve the overall performance and reduce skill requirements.In this study the prototype of an augmented ASiPE is applied in an experiment with impaired persons. It uses in-situ projection (i.e. the projection of work-relevant information directly into the working space, Figures 1, 8) to cognitively assist users in assembly and to improve their inclusion in regular work processes. The aim is to observe their behavior with this new form of human computer interaction and to empirically quantify the effects on performance both in time and quality.The results show that the augmentation has a catalytic effect: The test subjects assembling slowly could not cope with the augmented ASiPE and performed worse than their counterparts without augmentation. The test subjects who worked faster than average assembled the product significantly better, both with respect to time (14.5% reduction) and especially to quality (45.8% error reduction). The ability to access the potential of augmented workplaces seems to be related to a worker' cognitive potential which is not adequately mapped by the competence ratios sheltered work organizations currently use. Figure 1. The in-situ projection of assembly instructions and a one-to-one model of the correct result of the current assembly step provide cognitive support for the users.