Human factors and ergonomics

We describe the implementation and preliminary validation of an interactive platform – COLLEGO – to investigate joint action in a goal-oriented collaborative task. The platform records the interaction sequence of two partners alternating their leader/follower role. Two sensitized wooden surfaces are placed in front of each participant, who can use 6 cubes to build the tower. Any time a cube is picked/released, time stamp (ms) and position of selected objects are recorded. A case study showing how data are collected and analyzed to study dyad performance during the task is described. Finally, potential applications of the proposed solution are discussed.

Keywords: Human-human interaction , Joint action , Performance , Sensors , Synchronization , Time-series analysis

User experience (UX) evaluation and design have become important components of the product development process. The UX describes the users' subjective perceptions, responses and emotional reactions while interacting with products or services, considering users' emotions and cognitive activities as the basic elements of the experience. The emotions encompass physiological, affective, behavioral, and cognitive components; the cognitive activities generate and exploit the mental models that govern the human behavior. The literature offers several methods to evaluate the UX; one of them, the irMMs-based method, considers both users' emotions and mental models to evaluate the quality of the UX. Nevertheless, its current release misses the contribution of users who already know the product under evaluation. This research aims at improving the irMMs-based method by considering also users familiar with those products. The expected benefits of this improvement refer to the completeness of the evaluation results and to the definition of relationships between these results and the evaluation activities that allow them to be discovered. All of this can be useful for both researchers and designers who are willing to increase their knowledge about the generation and exploitation of mental models and to select the most suitable evaluation activities to perform time by time depending on the characteristics of the results they are interested in and on the resources available.

Keywords: Mental models , User experience , UX evaluation

In recent years, user experience (UX) has gained importance in product development because of the increased product complexity, the availability of innovative technologies, etc. UX evaluation methods and tools developed up to now keep users' emotions in the right consideration; nevertheless, they do not exploit mental models at best. This research aims at developing a UX evaluation method based on the so-called interaction-related mental models, a specific type of mental models focused on interaction matters. The description of the method proposed here considers also its adoption in the field and the results are compared with those obtained by a classic usability evaluation method. Although the scope of the proposed method is quite limited now (the UX evaluation focuses on CAD software packages only), the research results seem very promising. Nevertheless, this limitation will be overcome in the near future.

Keywords: CAD software packages , Evaluation , Interaction-related mental models , User experience

The standard treatment for bones fractures entails the use of a tailor-made plaster cast which has several disadvantages: its weight generally causes discomfort, it cannot be taken off without breaking it, it can cause skin rashes and prevents ventilation of the treated area. Therefore, the application of traditional casts to orthopaedics patients does not represent, to date, the best option. To overcome the above-mentioned drawbacks, many strategies based on reverse engineering and additive manufacturing techniques have been proposed and proved to be a valid alternative for producing custom orthoses. Encouraged by the aforementioned results, the authors have developed a low-cost system (called Oplà), specifically dedicated to the hand-wrist-arm district of paediatric patients and capable of creating a 3D CAD model of the orthosis ready to be printed by using additive manufacturing techniques. Such a system comprises a 3D scanner, a control software and a semi-automatic CAD procedure to easily model the orthopaedic device on each patient, without the need of CAD modelling professionals. To evaluate if Oplà can be effectively used by the medical staff to design patient specific 3D printable orthoses in the clinical practice, a preliminary usability assessment has been performed. Five professional nurses from the Meyer Children's Hospital of Florence (Italy) have been selected and trained in the use of the system. Subsequently, each of them has been asked to perform the whole process for the same patient. Effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction have been measured in accordance to ISO 9241-11. Results proved that the Oplà system is characterized by a good usability allowing the user to easily and intuitively perform all the tasks in a reasonable time.

Keywords: CAD , Cast modelling , Reverse engineering , Usability

The present work introduces an emotional tracking system to monitor Shopping Experience at different touchpoints in a retail store, based on the elaboration of the information extracted from biometric data and facial expressions. A preliminary test has been carried out to determine the system effectiveness in a real context regarding to emotion detection and customers' sex, age and ethnicity discrimination. To this end, information provided by the system have been compare with the results of a traditional video analysis. Results suggest that the proposed system can be effectively used to support the analysis of customer experience in a retail context.

Keywords: customer experience , emotion analysis , emotion tracking , face recognition , facial expression , shopping experience

The present work introduces an emotional tracking system to monitor Shopping Experience at different touchpoints in a store, based on the elaboration of the information extracted from biometric data and facial expressions. Preliminary tests suggest that the proposed system can be effectively used in a retail context.

Keywords: Customer experience , Emotion analysis , Emotion tracking , Shopping experience

This research aims to develop a system that examines and reacts to the changing behaviors and emotions of individuals in order to improve their shopping experience. The system is able to track emotions in real time at different touchpoints in a store and control a set of networked devices to configure the sensing space and all provided services responsive to the cus-tomers' needs. This paper describes the general approach adopted to design the overall system and illustrates in detail the module prototyped to understand the users' emotions through the analysis of facial expressions.

Keywords: Context-aware computing , Emotion recognition , Methods for CX , Shopping experience

Spatial Augmented reality (SAR) represents a key technology for the development of smart manufacturing as it is barrier free, does not require the use of Head Mounted Displays or any other wearable devices and it fits most of the industrial constraints. The paper presents a novel SAR-based system to support the manual work in future smart factories. It conveys technical instructions during assembly, provides alerts in case of risks for humans' safety and finally identifies which postures can bring to muscoloscheletric problems if repeated. Experiments with 30 participants demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed SAR-based system as compared LED monitor-based system and the overall achieved usability. The results proved that SAR technology improves the operators' performance with respect to a LED monitor-based system and that users well accept it. We found that SAR is more effective for difficult tasks than for simple ones.

Keywords: Augmented Reality , Ergonomic assessmnt , In-Situ projection , Musculoskeletal Disorders evaluation , task guidance

The technology has become a common part of our daily lives, and the integration of touchscreen technology into devices is quickly becoming equally common. In recent years, much research has been conducted on how people interact with handheld devices and on different types and uses of touchscreen technology, but there are few studies regarding people with severe problems of dexterity. For this reason, the present study aims to understand the effect of expertize with touchscreen on the performance of basic touch-gestures (i.e., tapping, dragging, pinching and spreading) in the case of people with Systemic Sclerosis. The performances of a total of twelve patients with SSc, six with and six without previous experience with touchscreen technology, were compared in the study. Recommendations based on the results of this study are proposed to improve the accessibility of touch-screen interfaces for these patients.

Keywords: Accessibility , Hand dysfunction , Human computer interaction , Scleroderma , Systemic sclerosis , Touch gestures , Touchscreen interface , Usability

The Adaptive systems are becoming essential into our daily life, thanks to the fast improvement of computing technology and the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Despite many efforts have been made to improve adaptive systems design methods they remain very heterogeneous and mostly limited to each domain of application. Moreover, the most of existing adaptive applications propose specific approaches for the development of new systems, without considering the opportunity to convert existing smart systems into adaptive systems. To overcome this limitation, this paper introduces an approach able to support the designers in adapting an already existing system. To this purpose, a new design method, consisting of the three following steps, has been developed: (1) context analysis; (2) adaptive module design; and (3) system re-design. The described approach is applied, as an example, to a Wi-Fi system for the control and management of household appliances developed by a large Italian company.

Keywords: Adaptive interface , Adaptive system , IoT , Methodology , Smart environment , Universal design

One of the most actual and consistent driver for industry is sustainability. This topic opens at different problems according to the three sustainability pillars: environment, economic, and social. Regarding the last one, there is a lack for methodologies and tools. Moreover, industries are crossing today a crucial transition in terms of technologies. The so called fourth industrial revolution is ongoing. This is a second challenge for industries that needs to be competitive reducing their time to market integrating new technologies on their production sites. From these perspectives, this work is aimed at highlighting the role of the humans under the Industry 4.0 paradigm. A new transdisciplinary engineering method to favour the sustainable manufacturing is provided. It allows designing a connected environment (IoT framework) aimed at measuring and promoting social sustainability on production sites. The work also remarks the relationship between social sustainability and productivity. Indeed, optimizing the human works permits to improve the quality of the working conditions while improving efficiency of the production system. The case study was performed at an Italian sole producer. The goal of the analysis was to improve and innovate the finishing area of the plant from a social point of view with the perspective of digital manufacturing. An IoT framework has been installed, without affecting the productivity, and the work of 2 operators has been compared in order to identify common problems and define a synergy strategy.

Keywords: Digital manufacturing , Human factors , Industry 4.0 , Social sustainability , Sustainable manufacturing

Helping older people to remain in their homes and to be more autonomous and less isolated, escaping from the potential related depression, is a global challenge. To support people ‘age in place', the paper proposes a specific data collection to establish the possible requirements of a novel Product Service Platform for wellbeing and health of older people. The study of a community of older people over 75 who live in their homes has allowed acquiring the knowledge of their main needs and characteristics. Two focus groups with experts dealing with the ageing population were then set up to define: (a) how to design an IT artifact that meets end-users needs and (b) the services that a Product Service Platform should provide.

Keywords: Elderly , Healthcare , Product service platform , Smart environments , Survey

In the context of Industry 4.0, this paper focuses on integration of workers in the digitalized factory. It proposes a method to design an IoT infrastructure and acquire human-related data from a production site in order to improve workers wellbeing and overall productivity. The method permits to identify bottlenecks and criticalities from a social point of view, focusing on the human performance, and define corrective actions at different levels (operations, plant layout or shift management). A case study was developed in collaboration with an Italian sole producer to validate the method and the related data acquisition system.

Keywords: Industry 4.0 , IoT , social sustainability

Robotic assistance to hand-impaired people represents an as difficult as important challenge. In this context, the research work of the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Florence (UNIFI) led to a tailor-made wearable device for rehabilitative and assistive purposes. In this paper, the synthesis of the development process, sequentially ordered, is given.

Manual Material Handling (MMH), by pushing or pulling carts, is a common task that characterizes any manufacturing or service operation, and there is always a significant human input to those operations in terms of physical load. The physical load represents the effect of input forces during MMH operations that depend on the interaction between material handling equipment and the working environment. Many times MMH represents a critical issue related to human-machine interaction due to the carts can work in environment with parameters different from those used in designing, subjecting workers to risk of musculoskeletal disorders. The aim of this work, developed in collaboration with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), is to develop a new procedure that allows estimating the initial and the maintenance forces necessary to push or pull carts, knowing the characteristics of the cart and the environment in which it works, in order to preventively assess the ergonomic indexes according to ISO 11228-2. The procedure is based on multibody simulations. The cart is modeled by Computer Aided Design (CAD) code and, then, imported in a multibody code where numerical simulations are performed in order to calculate the forces. In the multibody code static and dynamic friction coefficients of bearing of wheels are assigned, together with parameters of contact between wheels and floor. Changing the pivot angle of two floating wheels, several simulations have been carried out. Moreover, considering a cart used at the assembly line of the FCA plant of Pomigliano d'Arco (Naples), experimental tests have been performed in order to validate the procedure by comparing numerical results with the experimental ones.

Keywords: Ergonomics , Material Manual Handling , Multibody , Pushing/Pulling actions

In the Industry 4.0 and digital revolution era, the world of manufacturing industry is experiencing an innovative reconfiguration of design tools and methodologies, with a different approach to the production processes organization. The design philosophy is changing, integrating to engineering contribution interpretative aspects (design thinking), executive practices (design doing) and cognitive aspects (design cultures). The design becomes human-centered. The new Virtual Reality technologies allow to validate performances of designed products and production processes by means of virtual prototypes in a virtual simulated environment. This approach generates several benefits to the companies, in terms of costs and time, and allows optimizing the assembly line design and related workplaces, by improving workers' benefits too. This paper proposes an innovative method to validate the design of workplaces on automotive assembly lines in a virtual environment, based on ergonomic approach, according to ERGO - Uas system, applied by FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) groups, that integrates UAS method for measurement and EAWS method for biomechanical effort evaluation. Creating 3D virtual scenarios allows to carry on assembly tasks by virtual manikins in order to be evaluated from different points of view. In particular, data coming from the simulation can be used to assess several ergonomic indexes, improving safety, quality and design. The analysis is supported by the use of a motion capture system, developed by the University of Campania and composed of wearable inertial sensors, that estimates the attitude of fundamental human segments, using sensor fusion algorithms based on Kalman filtering. In this way, it is possible to make a further design validation, assessing the EAWS index basing on posture angles trends evaluated. This method can represent an innovation for human-centered design of workplace in developing new products, reducing costs and improving job quality.

Keywords: design , ergonomics , manufacturing , motion capture , product feasibility , simulation , Virtual reality

One of the critical issues characterizing the manufacturing industries, which within Industry 4.0 era are experiencing the new human-centered approach in design, is related to working postures assumed by the workers in assembly activities. In order to study the motion of human body, the research team developed an inertial MoCap system, composed by IMUs. The system allows to estimate the attitude of the fundamental segments of the human body, by using a Kalman filtering, and to evaluate the posture angles assumed during the motion. The system is modular, composed by 4 modules, made of 4 sensors. From acquired data it is possible to code algorithms to online assess the desired ergonomic scores, making the system able to take decisions for the workplace design optimization. In this paper, the full body inertial MoCap system is presented, supported by a test case to prove the reliability of the system in industrial environment.

Keywords: IMU , Industrial environment , Kalman filter , Motion tracking , Wearable devices

The introduction of new information and communication technologies (ICT) in factory environment is leading the world of manufacturing industry to a change. Indeed, we talk about Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution, that facilitates the vision of a Smart Factory in which systems become cyber-physical, interact between themselves, monitor and validate physical processes, creating a virtual copy of the physical world and making decisions based on complex numerical analysis. Virtualization and simulation of production processes generate several benefits, in terms of costs and time, optimizing the assembly line design and studying human-machine interaction. Regarding the last topic, this paper proposes an innovative method for ergonomic analysis of workplaces on automotive assembly lines in a virtual environment. The method can represent an innovation for human-centered design of workplace in developing new products, reducing costs and improving job quality thanks to a preventive ergonomic approach.

Keywords: EAWS , Human-centered design , Motion capture system , Virtual ergonomics , Virtual simulation

Easy-to-use collaborative robotics solutions, where human workers and robots share their skills, are entering the market, thus becoming the new frontier in industrial robotics. They allow to combine the advantages of robots, which enjoy high levels of accuracy, speed and repeatability, with the flexibility and cognitive skills of human workers. However, to achieve an efficient human–robot collaboration, several challenges need to be tackled. First, a safe interaction must be guaranteed to prevent harming humans having a direct contact with the moving robot. Additionally, to take full advantage of human skills, it is important that intuitive user interfaces are properly designed, so that human operators can easily program and interact with the robot. In this survey paper, an extensive review on human–robot collaboration in industrial environment is provided, with specific focus on issues related to physical and cognitive interaction. The commercially available solutions are also presented and the main industrial applications where collaborative robotic is advantageous are discussed, highlighting how collaborative solutions are intended to improve the efficiency of the system and which the open issue are.

Keywords: Collaborative robots , Human–robot collaboration , Industrial applications , Intuitive robot programming , Safety , User interfaces

The recent trends in modern industry highlight an increasing use of robots for a wide range of applications, which span from established manufacturing operations to novel tasks characterized by a close collaboration with the operators. Although human-robot collaboration allows to relieve operators of exhausting works, an effective collaboration requires a straightforward interaction to foster the use of robot assistants. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on human-robot interaction approaches and related interfaces addressed to robot programming. An overview of on-line and off-line robot programming techniques is first presented. Then, novel intuitive interaction means, such as those based on multi-modal interaction, virtual and augmented reality, are considered. The paper aims at pointing out that collaborative robotics can effectively reduce operator's physical workload if easy to use interfaces for robot programming are provided.

Keywords: Design methodology for HMS , Human operator support , Intelligent interfaces , Multi-modal interaction , Robotics technology