Industrial robots – the new friends of an aging workforce?

Various parameters influence humans’ wellbeing in, and thereby their acceptance of and performance within, human-robot interaction (HRI) applications. The experiment described here aimed to detect the most influential factors when subjects had to coexist with a medium-sized industrial robot in the same workspace. The distraction caused by the robot was detected using both objectively and subjectively measured variables. Robot velocity, the working area of the Tool Center Point (TCP) (which can be interpreted as equivalent to the distance between the two entities), and the hearing abilities of the participants were used as independent variables. The results revealed lower distraction/better performance when the robot had a lower acoustic impact (i.e. when the hearing abilities of the subjects were constrained). Additionally, robot velocity has an impact on human performance, as a slow velocity characteristic was preferred to fast or variable ones.