INCLUSIVE Smart and adaptive interfaces for INCLUSIVE work environment

Summary

Modern manufacturing systems are becoming more and more complex because of higher demands for fast production rate with high quality and flexibility, that is the ability to customize the production lines to the constantly changing market requests.

Despite high levels of automation of machines and robots, humans remain central to manufacturing operations since they take charge of control and supervision of manufacturing activities. Human operators interact with machines and robots by means of human-machine interfaces (HMIs), which are unavoidably becoming very complex as new functions are implemented by the production system and include a wide range of possible operational modes and commands.

In this scenario, human operators experience many difficulties to interact efficiently with the machine; this is particularly true for middle age workers who feel uncomfortable in the interaction with a complex computerized system and young inexperienced or disabled people who cannot effectively manage such complex production systems.

To overcome this gap, INCLUSIVE aims to develop a new concept of interaction between the user and the machines in which the behavior of the automation system adapts to human operator capabilities.

Therefore the project is focused on:

Human capabilities measurement
Adaptation of interfaces to human capabilities.
Teaching and training the unskilled users.

The expected impacts of the INCLUSIVE are:

Increase in adaptability, e.g. product customization capability.
Quality increase in human and automation performance.
Increase worker satisfaction and strengthen global position of industry in Europe through higher social acceptance levels.
Wide adoption of the new work environment in advanced manufacturing systems.

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More information & hyperlinks

Web resources:	http://www.inclusive-project.eu/ https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/723373
Start date:	01-10-2016
End date:	30-09-2019
Total budget - Public funding:	4 324 588,00 Euro - 4 324 588,00 Euro

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Original description

The market demands flexible productions lead to complexification of production systems and hence to more articulated Human Machine Interface (HMI). This new features tend to exclude from working environment elderly people who, even if they have a great experience, feel uncomfortable in the interaction with a complex computerized system. Moreover, complex HMI creates a barrier to young inexperienced or disabled people for an effective management of the production lines.
To tackle this problems, INCLUSIVE aims to develop a new concept of interaction between the user and the machines in which the behavior of the automation system adapts to human operator capabilities. Hence, INCLUSIVE develops an ecosystem of technological innovations driven by human factors analysis applied to three concrete industrial use cases, carefully chosen to represent a wide range of needs and requests from industry.
INCLUSIVE is based on three pillars:
• Human capabilities measurement
• Adaptation of interfaces to human capabilities.
• Teaching and training the unskilled users.
Once developed, the new system will be initially tested in lab and then in the use case premises where cognitive load measurement data will be analyzed. 12 months of the project are dedicated to the adoption and use in real conditions of the new tools in the three industrial use cases, in order to demonstrate its validity and improvement reached in working environment.
The anonymity of workers will be completed guarantee and the data collected will not be attributable to a specific person.
The consortium is formed by eleven partners (six companies and 5 research centres) located in Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland and Turkey, which represent a full product value chain that include: HMI developer (PROGEA), software developer (SOFTFACT) machine developer (KHS, SCM), system integrator (GIZELIS), final user (SILVERLINE) and research centres (UNIMORE, TUM, RWTHA and CIOP), and a technology transfer specialist (ASTER).