Determining Robotic Assistance for Inclusive Workplaces for People with Disabilities

Elodie Hüsing,Mathias Hüsing,Carlo Weidemann,Michael Lorenz,Burkhard Corves

doi:10.3390/robotics10010044

Abstract

Human–robot collaboration (HRC) provides the opportunity to enhance the physical abilities of severely and multiply disabled people thus allowing them to work in industrial workplaces on the primary labour market. In order to assist this target group optimally, the collaborative robot has to support them based on their individual capabilities. Therefore, the knowledge about the amount of required assistance is a central aspect for the design and programming of HRC workplaces. The paper introduces a new method that bases the task allocation on the individual capabilities of a person. The method obtains human capabilities on the one hand and the process requirements on the other. In the following step, these two profiles are compared and the workload of the human is acquired. This determines the amount of support or assistance, which should be provided by a robot capable of HRC. In the end, the profile comparison of an anonymized participant and the concept of the human–robot workplace is presented.

Highlights

People with disabilities often work beneath their capabilities inducing a dissatisfaction with their occupation, as they feel a lack of self-fulfillment
human–robot collaboration (HRC) is introduced as a new assistive technology for people with disabilities to provide physical assistance
Task allocation between humans and robots is a central aspect for the design and programming process of the HRC workplace

Summary

Introduction

People with disabilities often work beneath their capabilities inducing a dissatisfaction with their occupation, as they feel a lack of self-fulfillment. A disadvantage of the approaches presented in [4,5,6] is that general human capabilities are taken into account instead of individual ones belonging to a particular person These examples show that approaches for defining task allocation for HRC exist, but they are either cost-, time- or process-orientated. They consider only general human capabilities, which cannot be used to make a statement about the amount of assistance that an individual requires. This paper introduces a new approach that bases task allocation on the individual human being with their capabilities and compares them with the specific requirements of a given task Result of this comparison is the amount of assistance, which should be provided by a collaborative robot.

Method

Break Down of Overall Task

Evaluation and Comparison of Capability Profile and Requirement Profiles