First Application of Robot Teaching in an Existing Industry 4.0 Environment: Does It Really Work?

Abstract

This article reports three case studies on the usability and acceptance of an industrial robotic prototype in the context of human-robot cooperation. The three case studies were conducted in the framework of a two-year project named AssistMe, which aims at developing different means of interaction for programming and using collaborative robots in a user-centered manner. Together with two industrial partners and a technological partner, two different application scenarios were implemented and studied with an off-the-shelf robotic system. The operators worked with the robotic prototype in laboratory conditions (two days), in a factory context (one day) and in an automotive assembly line (three weeks). In the article, the project and procedures are described in detail, including the quantitative and qualitative methodology. Our results show that close human-robot cooperation in the industrial context needs adaptive pacing mechanisms in order to avoid a change of working routines for the operators and that an off-the-shelf robotic system is still limited in terms of usability and acceptance. The touch panel, which is needed for controlling the robot, had a negative impact on the overall user experience. It creates a further intermediate layer between the user, the robot and the work piece and potentially leads to a decrease in productivity. Finally, the fear of the worker of being replaced by an improved robotic system was regularly expressed and adds an additional anthropocentric dimension to the discussion of human-robot cooperation, smart factories and the upcoming Industry 4.0.

The Promotion of Technology Acceptance and Work Engagement in Industry 4.0: From Personal Resources to Information and Training

“…Technology acceptance was detected through four items taken from the Subjective Acceptance Questionnaire [48]; an example item is "The use of technology and automation systems increases my professional effectiveness" (Likert scale from 1 = totally disagree to 5 = totally agree). Cronbach's alpha was 0.75 for the white-collar sample and 0.77 for the blue-collar sample.…”

Fourth Industrial Revolution: technological drivers, impacts and coping methods

“…The Fourth Industrial Revolution is not limited to industrial production. It is manifested in all aspects of the society, including technology (Xu et al, 2013;Lalanda et al, 2017;Theorin et al, 2017), production (Kube and Rinn, 2014;Webster, 2015), consumption and business (Sommer, 2015;Gentner, 2016;Ivanov et al, 2016), and it is influencing every field of human life (Home et al, 2015;Singer, 2015;Qin and Cheng, 2016;Sackey and Bester, 2016;Weiss et al, 2016). So far, we have not reached a concrete understanding about this technological trend.…”

Computer Simulation of Human-Robot Collaboration in the Context of Industry Revolution 4.0

“…However, only qualified and highly educated employee will be able to control such technologies, so collaboration between the industry and university should be more intense [23]. For example, a study on the usability and acceptance of an industrial prototype in relation to collaborative robots with humans in [24] has suggested the urgency of adaptation of assistive robot systems. It is well known that the collaborative robots (cobots) are very expensive and they are not easily accessible by common students and researchers, except for those who work in leading research institution or industry.…”