Chair: Sarah R. Fletcher
Cranfield University-UK
The development of robotics technology over the last years and the fast evolution of AI and IoT have paved the way for applications that extend far beyond the traditional prototypical representations of the industrial robot.
In this new technological paradigm that is expected to drive the robotics market in the coming years, robots and workers will coexist in the same workplace and share roles and functions in a process of production that merges the benefits of automated and manual processes. However, having robots interacting in a human-like way, in real-time, requires a human-centred design approach that (i) follows high safety standards regulating the quality of human/ robot physical interaction, (ii) enables the robot’s perception of the behaviour of their human co-operators, their expected actions/responses (iii) atunes the robot’s collaborative actions accordingly.
The present session aims to discuss the technical and ethical challenges posed by the new paradigm and the fundamental role of human-centred design and human factors in the definition of robotic architectures for Human/Robot Collaboration
