Empowerment in tomorrow’s production: Rethinking mixed skill factories and collaborative robot systems

Project description

Flexibility in production is becoming increasingly important due to customer-specific mass production. The development of Mixed-Skill Factories in the EmPReSs project aimed to demonstrate this flexibility through innovative human-robot collaboration, which, together with intelligent and flexible planning, enables new divisions of labour and thus human empowerment.

The project ‘Empowerment in tomorrow’s production: Rethinking Mixed Skill Factories and Collaborative Robot Systems (EmPReSs)” explored novel approaches to human-robot collaboration in factories. The key question was how these new technical systems can contribute to empowering workers and humanising work in production. The scientific challenges in EmPReSs are manifold. On the one hand, it is necessary to develop a consistent and formal modelling of process step requirements and capabilities in line with human-robot competencies. On the other hand, the specific characteristics of human work need to be captured and translated into intelligent process planning. At the same time, different aspects of empowerment are developed and integrated into the human-robot cooperation by means of technical models.

The aim of this research project was to conduct an interdisciplinary and conceptual feasibility study on the design of “mixed skill factories” based on an innovative collaboration between humans and robots. On the one hand, existing technologies and tools are analysed and adapted from a technical-scientific perspective, focusing on more flexible production planning and intuitive control of robots. On the other hand, the resulting scope for shaping technology, organisation and work is considered from an occupational sociological perspective. It is crucial to take full account of the empowerment of workers in order to create a basis for the humanisation of work. A systematic analysis of the opportunities and risks associated with this new type of cooperation will lead to both the flexibilisation of production and the empowerment of employees within this new regime of “mixed skill factories”.

The researchers developed the empowerment-by-design approach to empowerment in human-machine interaction (HMI). The approach provides criteria for HMI design and includes the dimensions of content, time and learning facilitation. For the implementation of Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC), the team developed the Mixed-Skills concept and a Mixed-Skill-Value to refine the task allocation between humans and robots. Based on the criteria developed, the team also designed a graphical human-machine interface for interaction with humans.

As part of the project, the results were demonstrated through a physical concept demonstrator; thus, the “Empowerment-by-design” approach, including criteria for empowerment, humane work, and inherent learning in work, became tangible.

The project was completed by 30 June, 2023