• Project number: F 2506
• Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
• Status: Completed Project

Description:

Digitalisation and the use of innovative technologies such as interactive robots or exoskeletons have the potential to permanently change our working tasks and working environments. Early research into these systems is essential in order to anticipate these changes and enable a human-centred design of innovative technologies.

The SOPHIA project developed new forms of of socially interactive robots. These should enable dynamic monitoring of the human-robot-interaction and, in addition, enable human-centred robot behaviour. Another aim was to improve employee comfort, ergonomic parameters and reliability in hybrid production environments.

The Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) was responsible for providing the human-factors perspective to the project, including the evaluation of human-robot-interaction and the derivation of design recommendations. The focus was laid on interaction quality, usability, technology acceptance and changes in tasks and jobs. User requirements for robots and exoskeletons were developed as well as a framework for continuous evaluation activities.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the first data collections were conducted online, but the final evaluations were carried out on-site at the various industrial partners. Additional laboratory, field and online studies enabled the project to survey over 1,000 potential end-users of the technologies on in-depth aspects of human-system interaction. Another important result was the further development of evaluation methods for human-robot interaction, including a new questionnaire based on the ISO standard 9241-110.