Talk title:
Productivity and ergonomics, a trade-off in human-robot collaboration?

ABSTRACT of the TALK
Collaborative robotics refers to the cooperation between humans and machines and aims at improving productivity and at facilitating the worker in demanding tasks. The advantage of collaboration is to combine the superior cognitive and motor skills of the operator with the physical capabilities of the robots. The well-being of the worker during his/her collaboration with a robot is a trending topic in the scientific literature, possibly motivated by the increasing attention of manufacturing companies to the filed of ergonomics. In this talk, recent findings on the ergonomic analysis of postures as well as the induced cognitive stress on the human worker during the collaboration with a robot will be presented. Indeed, a high level of cognitive stress can negatively affect the human capabilities during the interaction, thus compromising the performance of the working dyad. It will be shown that productivity and well-being of the operator during the interaction with the robot are not necessarily constituting a trade-off.


BIO
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