FELICE Update: IfADo researchers present results at HFES Conference

At the annual Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) conference in Lübeck, IfADo researchers Melanie Karthaus and Felix Dreger presented the results of their work on the FELICE project. As part of the project, two focus groups were conducted, in which technical partners of the project (developers) and users, who are responsible for an assembly line, discuss their demands and expectations about cobots and human-robot collaboration.

As digitalization progresses, collaborative robots are being used in many assembly processes. The successful development, implementation and establishment of human-robot collaboration requires an objective, human-centered requirement analysis that focuses on user-friendliness and user acceptance. But different backgrounds of developers and users of robotic systems lead to different assumptions about the best way to implement them. The aim of the current study was to investigate the differences and similarities in these assumptions.

Although both designers and users consider usefulness, reliability and safety to be the most important criteria, developers tend to focus more on technical requirements like correct timing, low error rate. On the other hand, users tend to prioritize the impact of collaboration on themselves and their work, for example the support of the worker and the avoidance of stressful situations. Therefore, the involvement of end-users before technical development seems to be important to appropriately address their concerns in line with prominent human factor models.