Enabling working methods for human-machine collaboration in industry 4.0 – COLLABORATION-4_0

An analysis of the literature and existing equipment, as well as several industrial situations, was conducted. Two theses, one in ergonomics and the other in industrial engineering, established a substantial state-of-the-art. The notion of an enabling situation was clarified and defined, while the engineering thesis allowed these contributions to be broken down into environmental capacitance, including technological capabilities and methods for evaluating immersive or augmented environments. Case studies, such as those conducted for CSF, and industrial (ARaymond, Michelin) and agricultural (exoskeleton) visits made it possible to analyze the impact of 4.0 technologies on operator activity. Monographs modeled enabling situations based on criteria such as not being incapacitating, enabling superior ecological performance, increasing room for maneuver, and promoting future instrumentalization. An initial formulation of the characteristics of an enabling industrial work situation and the performance analysis protocol for enabling collaborative industrial activities was made possible. Experiments in a company (Michelin) and in a laboratory with engineering students made it possible to refine the operational criteria in a specification. A redesign of a workplace training program was conducted following the methods recommended by David Baslé. Observations and analyses of these real-life work situations are reported in Nathan Compan's monographs.

The implementation projects carried out and analyzed reinforced and clarified the findings of the ergonomics literature on situations conducive to the user's professional development. The scattered criteria from the literature were brought together in the model, which was translated into a specification. Initial scenarios with engineering students show that the enabling situations model can influence the projects conducted if the students receive sufficient support. Future work will test the model for design activities in industrial projects. Laboratory experiments conducted at G-SCOP demonstrated that certain capacitating criteria can increase the capacitance of an environment. Finally, the project was the subject of a seminar with industrialists from the Auvergne Rhône Alpes region, in Clermont Ferrand on May 17, 2022, to share and consolidate the perspectives opened up by the project results.

The implementation projects carried out and analyzed have made it possible to consolidate and clarify the findings of the literature on activity ergonomics around situations favorable to the professional development of the user. The analysis of industrial situations has allowed the identification of ergonomic criteria that form the capacitance of a work environment. The first simulations with engineering students show that the model of capacitating situations can influence the projects carried out if the students are sufficiently supported. The experiments carried out in the laboratory at GSCOP have demonstrated that certain capacitating criteria (operational transparency, continuous design in use and instrumentalization) make it possible to increase the capacitance of an environment. A framework for the technical redesign of a more capacitating work environment has also been proposed. It has been applied for the redesign of a pre-existing Human-Machine environment based on augmented reality, to instrument training at an industrial workstation and make this self-training more capacitating. It has also been tested to specify an innovative use of a cobot, giving the operator the levers for effective sustainable actions.

The results obtained correspond to the initial objectives. The 2-year Covid period fell right in the middle of the project. While it impacted the project methodology and required methodological reorientations, it did not alter the results obtained. An enabling situation is now well characterized (thesis + publications). It can be used in industrial situation analysis. It will now be a matter of deepening it to extract rules for designing industrial work situations that can be used by professionals. We are working on setting up 2 complementary projects in this direction. Thus, different projects will be able to build on these results of this ANR project: 1) A thesis in collaboration between INRS, G-SCOP and ACTé is under discussion to characterize attentional risks in work situations while wearing an augmented reality headset. 2) Work on the creation of a remote collaboration interface between immersive environments should integrate the notions of capacitance from their design (G-SCOP is seeking thesis funding on this subject). 3) Immersive applications for the design of product architectures (as part of a joint laboratory accepted by the ANR), will take up these criteria for creating immersive environments. 4) A project with the Michelin company is currently under construction to test the model of enabling situations in design with a team of methods engineers responsible for designing the technological production solutions of tomorrow. The recruitment of a study engineer followed by a cifre thesis is planned for fall 2023. The design of industrial workstations is an important area of ??research and development for its impact on the economy and society. The first point is its contribution to the attractiveness of industry in a context of strong societal demand for reindustrialization of the country and strong industrial demand to counter the labor shortage. The second point is its response to the pressing demand for employee well-being at work through the method of developing more efficient and more socially responsible work environments.

Compan, N.; Coutarel, F.; Brissaud, D.; Rix-Lièvre, G. Les situations de collaboration capacitante (ECS) : intérêt pour l’analyse des collaborations humain-technologie de l’industrie contemporaine. Le travail humain. 2022, 85(3), 211-240.

Baslé, D.; Noël, F.; Brissaud, D.; Rocchi V. Improving Design of Enabling Collaborative Situation Based on Augmented Reality Devices. PLM. Green and Blue Technologies to Support Smart and Sustainable Organizations. Springer. 2022, 433 446.

Compan, N.; Coutarel, F.; Brissaud, D.; Rix-Lièvre, G. Enabling Collaborative Situations in 4.0 Industry: Multiple Case Study. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems 223. Springer. 2022, 614–620.

Coutarel, F. Future of Work in future Industry : from humans factors to increase of human actions possibilities. La intervención ergonómica para la transformación del trabajo, Universidad de ATACAMA, Oct 2021, Copiapo, Chile.

Collaboration 4.0 project is a contribution to the main industry of the future challenge of the efficient place of humans in the factory of the future. Industry of the future means the high-tech digitalization of production systems to get more flexibility of the whole value chain to achieve personalized products and sustainability. Enabling technologies like Internet Of Things, wearables, robotics, Artificial Intelligence and 3D Printings are the key drivers of this industrial transformation. The main challenge is to keep the economic value of mass production (3.0) when competitive lot-size 1 personalized production (4.0). The Collaboration 4.0 project aims at studying working situations enabled by the new digital technologies in 4.0 industrial environment for their productivity and attractive features. The project addresses the Nb 3 ANR research axis “Fostering industrial renewal” and especially the Nb 1sub-axis “Factory of the future: Human, organization and technologies”. Its overarching objective is to design collaborative workplaces of the future in which workers and machines are closely combined to reach new sustainable performance in 4.0 industrial environment. The project is featured from three fundamental research hypotheses: 1) The Human-Machine collaborative activity of the future will be carried out in a new enabling competence-based industrial environment, 2) Digital technologies are flexible and frequently evolve, 3) Work and industrial organization highly influences the well performing Human-Machine collaborative activity. The project aims at designing new workplaces in which workers and machines share the same space to complete shared tasks by using work-enabling digital technologies. The worker will manage work activities controlling the machine tasks and instructing it. The machine is designed to meet the worker needs. It could provide worker with new ways of working. We want to define and characterize the new types of 4.0 collaborative workplaces useful and well performing in a specific industrial situation. The core issues are the efficient technology uses while producing and the industrial organization to be set up.

Concretely, the project will study two different work situations from two case studies: a collaborative activity between a robot and a human on one side and between an augmented reality wearable and a human on the other side. Delivered results will be a classification of human-Machine collaborative work situations in an enabling industrial environment, a framework for analyzing an enabling collaborative industrial activity and recommendations for designing enabling industrial workplaces. The project is a multidisciplinary project combining industrial engineering, ergonomics and digital technologies. It is featured in five scientific tasks and one management task. A workplace-of-the-future demonstrator will be developed at the Grenoble INP S.MART technological platform from existing facilities. An industrial advisory board accompany the research partners to operationalize the theoretical propositions. It is a 48-month project and relies on two PhD thesis and an engineer position. The project will be managed by G-SCOP laboratory (industrial engineering, augmented reality) alongside with LIG (robotics and HMI) and ACTé (ergonomics). Each laboratory will bring to the project their human resources and equipment as necessary. Project results will be spread through scientific publications, guidelines for industrial companies and communication activities.