The main objective is researching how to develop a robot-aided workplace while continuously assessing and preventing risk factors musculoskeletal disorders. The main context of this study is cellular meat production in which employees stands on the meat processing line, performing one or few tasks each on every piece of meat. This type of work involves lots of repeated strenuous movement. The theories and experiments will pertain to creating an efficient and sustainable workplace in the general sense, regardless of the type of working environment.
There are two main components of the PhD, one being the development of human-robot interaction in the workplace, robotics and augmented reality, while the other component is developing methods of measuring the effects on the physical well-being of the employees. This involves researching state-of-the-art models for evaluating physical well-being, measuring elements such as posture, sedentary activity, physical exertion and repetitive motion, while being able to capture those metrics continuously in an non-obstructive way using sensor technology.
A particular challenge in HRI is the asymmetrical communication capabilities of the human and the robot partner, creating a need for a multilevel coordination between them to achieve successful interaction: The communication level, the physical level, the social level and the task level, the communication and physical level being the main focuses of this PhD study, considering their overlap in the manufacturing context.