Cognitive design of collaborative human-robot workstations in Industry 5.0 : a Kansei Engineering approach to quantifying emotions in problem decomposition.

Abstract

Human-centricity is at the frontier of the novel Industry 5.0 paradigm, in which the well-being of the operator is not solely acknowledged but is actively heeded to. One application of this is in human-robot collaboration (HRC). Working in proximity to a collaborative robot has stemmed productivity, flexibility and assistance, but has also amassed concerns for safety. Designing physically safe HRC workstations is well established in scholarly work and international standards. However, attention must also be directed towards the cognitive facet of safety. Unlike physical safety requirements such as speed or distance, which are reasonably quantifiable; quantification of cognitive requirements may not be as straightforward, owing to the subjectivity of user emotions. Consequently, this work contributes a Kansei Engineering approach geared towards identification and quantification of requirements related to cognitive safety requirements in HRC workstations. The outcomes of this study shall then be implemented within a broader Axiomatic Design (AD) of a physically and cognitively safe HRC workstation, underlining the suitability of using Kansei Engineering to quantify cognitive requirements in preparation of Axiom 1 and Axiom 2 of the Axiomatic Design process.