Successfully Fitting People and Robots Together to Improve Work Performance

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This course will provide delegates with a fundamental understanding of the key human factors involved in human-robot systems, and how to assess impacts and improve design to enhance their adoption and performance.

It is widely recognised that the UK is lagging in its adoption of automation compared with its major trading competitors. A potential solution is human robot collaboration where human skill is augmented with the use of robotics. However, a key barrier is that whilst the hardware is well understood the ‘human’ side of the equation is generally less well understood, often resulting in ineffective and inefficient implementation. A better understanding of how to improve the design of human-robot interactions and enhance user adoption is needed.

This course uniquely equips those who develop, implement or manage industrial systems with a better understanding of how people interact with – and impact on – human-robot systems, optimising the potential business returns on their usage. The course is intended to provide delegates with a basic introduction to the key human and social factors surrounding human-robot interaction, and insight into how to apply this knowledge to the industrial context. This knowledge is critical to a successful implementation of these systems yet currently not provided in available courses.

Although robotics courses are available at other universities, there are very few short courses that teach robotics, and these tend to be at a fundamental level with no human factors or psychology insight relevant to the industry. This course provides roboticists with this opportunity to extend their knowledge and improve the impact of their work on those who will interact with it, by providing delegates with an understanding of how to optimise human-robot system design and integration through the application of practical human analysis and user-centred methods relevant to robotic systems.

At a glance

Duration2 Days
LocationCranfield campus
Cost£550. The course fee includes refreshments and lunch during the day. Accommodation is not included and must be booked separately. Concessions available

Course structure

This two day course is delivered through a combination of lectures and workshops. During the workshops the students will conduct experiments and collect human robot collaboration data from interactions with the collaborative robots in the in the Intelligent Automation Laboratory.

What you will learn

On completion of the course, you will:

Have a broad understanding of the key human and social factors that are important in human robot collaboration and their impacts.
Be able to identify and select appropriate methods for evaluating the human side of human-robot systems.
Have learnt how to use some of these tools and apply them correctly for your particular circumstances.
Know how to analyse manufacturing processes to identify areas / tasks that are most suitable for human-robot collaboration.

Core content

We will explore key human and social factors, such as workload, awareness, trust, and acceptance, to give you a broad awareness of human-robot interaction impacts
We will show you how to assess cognitive and performance processes using reliable methods so you can evaluate the responses of your individual workers and workforces
We will also go through basic user-centred design concepts and methods to enhance your ability for assessing social and environmental factors in the design of systems and how to tailor implementation / training to optimise adoption
We will cover fundamental ethical principles and standards that you need to consider, and how these are shifting with new technology development to provide you with an understanding of current and forthcoming requirements
Environmental and user centred design considerations will be outlined and discussed in the context of your own workplace experiences. This will be an opportunity to consider what your companies do well and changes that may help to improve interaction with technology. Factors that cannot be changed will also be discussed in terms of how they may affect working performance to provide you with possible ways to overcome these factors.
A workshop will be held in the afternoon of both days, which will involve applying the analysis methods to a human robot task. This will provide you with an opportunity to practice what has been taught in the morning and learn how best to present the information gained from the assessments

Who should attend

This course is suitable for anyone involved in the design, implementation and operation of human-robot systems, e.g. robot engineers, systems integrators, production / maintenance engineers, operations managers, etc.