Abstract
Within the context of Industry 4.0 and of the new emerging Industry 5.0, human factors are becoming increasingly important, especially in Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC). This paper provides a novel study focused on the human aspects involved in industrial HRC by exploring the effects of various HRC setting factors. In particular, this paper aims at investigating the impact of industrial HRC on user experience, affective state, and stress, assessed through both subjective measures (i.e., questionnaires) and objective ones (i.e., physiological signals). A collaborative assembly task was implemented with different configurations, in which the robot movement speed, the distance between the operator and the robot workspace, and the control of the task execution time were varied. Forty-two participants were involved in the study and provided feedbacks on interaction quality and their affective state. Participants’ physiological responses (i.e., electrodermal activity and heart rate) were also collected non-invasively to monitor the amount of stress generated by the interaction. Analysis of both subjective and objective responses revealed how the configuration factors considered influence them. Robot movement speed and control of the task execution time resulted to be the most influential factors. The results also showed the need for customization of HRC to improve ergonomics, both psychological and physical, and the well-being of the operator.
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13 November 2022
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Open access funding provided by Politecnico di Torino within the CRUI-CARE Agreement. This work has been partially supported by “Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca” Award “TESUN-83486178370409 finanziamento dipartimenti di eccellenza CAP. 1694 TIT. 232 ART. 6”.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by R. Gervasi and K. Aliev. The first draft of the manuscript was written by R. Gervasi with contribution of K. Aliev under the supervision of L. Mastrogiacomo and F. Franceschini. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Gervasi, R., Aliev, K., Mastrogiacomo, L. et al. User Experience and Physiological Response in Human-Robot Collaboration: A Preliminary Investigation. J Intell Robot Syst 106, 36 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01744-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-022-01744-8