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Cognitive Workload Evaluation of Onsite Workers Collaborating with a Teleoperated Robot during Assembly Tasks Using Heart Rate

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: Incorporating collaborative robots in modern industry has given rise to the synergistic collaboration between humans and robots. Working along with a teleoperated robot enables completion of tasks across geographical boundaries and has the potential to address the skills gap in manufacturing by enhancing future distributed manufacturing environments. In this study, we investigated cognitive demands of onsite workers in two different collaboration scenarios: (1) Human-Human (HH) and (2) Teleoperator-Robot-Human (tRH), during wire assembly tasks with varying physical and cognitive workloads. Under an additional cognitive task condition, the perceived effort (measured by NASA-TLX) for HH (57.8 ± 26.4) was significantly higher than for tRH (31.6 ± 26.5). However, no significant differences in heart rate were found between HH and tRH. These findings suggest that tRH might not introduce additional cognitive demands compared to HH collaboration, despite the lack of in-person and/or less direct communication.

Source: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting

DOI: 10.1177/10711813241260321

Authors: Sakshi Taori, Sunwook Kim, Sol Lim

Institution: Virginia Tech

Language: English

Topic: Human-Automation Interaction and Safety

Subfield: Social Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: National Science Foundation

Award: FW-HTF-P: Enabling Multifaceted Collaboration between Humans, Robots, and Remote Workers for Future Distributed Manufacturing