The Relevance of Failure to Ensure Safety in Human-Robot Cooperation in Work Environments

Abstract

The paper is focusing on human–robot cooperation in work environments from the perspective of genuine sociological insights regarding human–robot interaction. Due to the typical range of application of robots, aspects of work safety were so far mainly emphasized as an issue of avoiding somatic harm. However, when it comes to social robots and to the design of settings of straight human-robot cooperation cognitive aspects should be taken into consideration. A crucial aspect for human-robot interaction (HRI) in work environments is avoiding strong routinization and a strong reduction in the human’s attention. Especially if the robot is assuming a large workload the stated problem could arise and pose danger to safety. Systematically induced crisis in terms of confronting the humans with credible contingency in the form of small amounts of unexpected behavior could be a very effective solution. The humans cooperating with robots are not involved in a behavioral crisis in an everyday sense; the term “crisis” is used in a ethnomethodological meaning to describe a robot behavior that slightly surprises the human user. To achieve this goal and the intended benefit, the robot simply must act in such a way that is somewhat different from the human’s expectations. When expectations do not meet with such surprise after a fair amount of interaction experience, humans automatically tend toward routinization.