Högskolan i Skövde

Advancements in human-robot collaboration (HRC) are major aspects of the future Industry 4.0. HRC entails humans that cooperatively work with fenceless robots in dynamic, changing, and rather unpredictable settings where they should assist and learn from each other and automatically respond to changes [1]. The envisioning of smart factories of the future results in new and additional challenges for how to evaluate various aspects of the collaboration between the human operator and the robot. The common practice in HRC is to focus on safety and performance-related issues, which are highly influenced by human factors (HF). Because of the prevailing orientation towards HF, HRC runs the risk of not considering the modern understandings of human cognition and technology-mediated activity in a socio-material context [2]. Previous research reveals that safety is a necessary but not sufficient condition for avoiding accidents between humans and robots.