Opportunities, benefits and acceptance of smart devices in the industrial working environment of the future

Project management: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Köhler, MBA

Project type: Initial funding

Project duration: 2017 - 2018

If you want to work together, you have to be able to communicate with each other. Technological progress and the possibilities of digitalization are creating new forms of collaboration between humans and machines in the factories of the future. In 2016, we can literally talk to our smartphones. However, we still largely communicate with our machines via cryptic control commands or cumbersome input terminals. There is still a need for action for the industrial use of the above-mentioned new possibilities for collaboration between man and machine. "Hey Robi" sees itself as a cross-industry innovation project that transfers the working principle of a doctor in the operating theater to industrial assembly.

The following questions need to be answered:

• How widespread are human-robot collaborations in industry and what inhibits their use?
• Which devices and types of voice control are suitable for industrial use?
• How must a workplace be designed in order to make optimum use of the potential of human-robot collaboration?
• How does the possibility of voice control affect people in the work system?

Cooperation partners

• EmRoLab - Test field digitalization @ htw saar (emrolab.org)
• SNNU - Systems Neuroscience & Neurotechnology Unit (snnu.uni-saarland.de)

Publications from this project

Köhler, Christian: Cooperation between humans and robots - Are we still cooperating or are we already collaborating?
VDI-Z Integrierte Produktion, 159 (2017), No. 7/8 - July/August, pp. 75-77, Springer-VDI Verlag, 2017