Editorial: Human-Centered Design for HRI in manufacturing

Jose Antonio Mulet Alberola^1,2*Ganix Lasa Erle³

• ¹Universita degli Studi di Brescia, Brescia, Italy
• ²Istituto di Sistemi e Tecnologie Industriali Intelligenti per il Manifatturiero Avanzato Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Milan, Italy
• ³Mondragon Unibertsitatea, Arrasate, Spain

New manufacturing systems paradigms are supported by the creation of genuine collaborative systems which emphasize the main added value through the interactions with reference to individual actions and tasks, rather than merely jobs of workplaces. As part of this development and new research lines, the research topic captures the importance of the human factor to design and develop new technology that interacts with humans, and whose functionality really leverage the adoption of the humancantered design concept.In terms of physical safety, [1] studies the power and force limiting (PFL) mode according to ISO/TS 15066. Measurements are taken on different trials and aims at biomechanical limit identification that ensures collision safety in HRI. The analysis is limited by impact areas and subjects but shows promising evaluation criteria for threshold forces evaluation.The concept of flow is introduced in [2] as the optimal state in human-robot collaboration that mainly improves both task performance and positive experience perceived by users. It is characterized by various factors such as intense focus, immersion and a significance sense of control. This three-channel flow model correlates flow states, boredom and anxiety. The study shows that task complexity affects flow status, as well as robot behaviours in collaborative tasks definitively influences the level of challenge experienced by users. Both factors are suggested to be adjusted dynamically for an improved experience.To adopt a more natural behaviour in HRI, [3] explores users' direct eye-gaze as a cognitive action that shows the willingness to interact. Most of the users not only tend to look directly to the collaborative robot when triggering the joint activity, but they keep looking at the robot during the entire collaborative action or assembly cycle. Results demonstrate that natural social habits exhibit in human-human interactions may also be used when interacting with robots in a collaborative manner. However further technical improvements need to be done when deploying such a system to completely outstand more performance while securing the more natural users' feeling during the whole interaction.As all these interactions further evolve and are deployed in more industrial scenarios, more granular patterns appear unveiling slight differences in distinct interaction forms. This emphasizes the variety and variability of interactions as it provides a valuable foundation towards the understanding of subtle differences during interactions. Even not completely characterized, [4] reveals that an automatic clustering can reliably and reproducibly find meaningful, distinct interaction forms in different scenarios based on spatial and temporal behaviours, which outperforms mode classical clustering approaches.These promising studies propose further work to be done not only in terms of physical interactions but also in social ones. The editors and coordinators of this research topic highly encourage the further study of HRI on real industrial scenarios by the evaluation and analysis of all conditions, towards the creation of more dynamic interaction-based relationships that leads to enhanced performance and well-being. Presented works support the importance of the human factors to design and develop new technology that closely interacts with humans, and whose functionality really leads to an increase in performance, safety, and efficiency avoiding misuse and/or disuse as manufacturing systems evolve.