Physical and cognitive augmentation in advanced manufacturing (Made in Europe Partnership) (RIA)

Expected Outcome:Manufacturing industry should benefit from the following outcomes:

• Empower workers at all levels in factories, both individuals and teams, through breakthrough augmentation technologies embodying the next stage in human-machine interactions;
• Enhance, with the help of these technologies and related contributions from Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), the flexibility, inclusiveness, safety and well-being of workers in the industrial environment, leading to more attractive jobs in the EU, attracting and retaining talents from new generations (e.g. Generation Z);
• Foster the human-centric aspect of the Industry 5.0 model, through insights into how technology affects the working environment and the organisation, and into how technology can support the worker in their career (including the associated meaningful job profiles).

Scope:The rising complexity of discrete manufacturing operations requires workers to adapt to the introduction of new breakthrough technologies, machines, processes, and production environments (considering where appropriate legacy machinery). In addition, labour shortages are growing. The development of a human-centric culture that places the humans at the centre of the manufacturing operation is crucial. Augmentation technologies support and empower the workforce, leading to more high-quality jobs and prosperity beyond efficiency. They can relieve people of non-creative tasks or reduce human strain and stress and potential risks in the workplace. Augmentation technologies can therefore produce benefits for both workers and managers and can become the most effective ways of supporting, or amplifying, human abilities.

Proposals should develop breakthrough technologies to augment human capabilities and skills. Proposals should cover all of the following aspects:

• Develop breakthrough solutions (based on e.g. mechatronics, sensing and photonics) for human-centric approaches; these include innovative perception technologies to sense the shopfloor environment and to predict the intentions of humans, also leading to enhanced worker safety and reduction of discomfort, fatigue and physical and psychological stress;
• Develop innovative methodologies, potentially using AI, to provide reasoning capabilities and to control the behaviour of the manufacturing systems, to support humans and to interact and communicate with them; this will foster natural improvements in efficiency, sharing of knowledge, inclusiveness, accessibility and flexibility;
• Assess and take into account the needs of managers and workers, at the beginning of the design phase and throughout all stages up to the development of a prototype, ensuring that both workers and managers have the right skills to implement the innovative solutions and that the solutions take into account the variety of workforces;
• Develop new methodologies to perform an assessment of augmentation technologies and their suitability and value added (beyond economics) for workers in all their diversity.

Digital-twin models can be potentially used in the development of new assessment methodologies to perform validation in a virtual scenario.

The assessment methodologies may lead to new standards for the validation of the developed systems, or indicate how new or existing standards could benefit from a human-centric approach and how the developed systems could support this.

Proposals should take into account Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) contributions regarding human-related barriers for the uptake of augmentation technologies in industrial environments, such as ergonomics, user experience, comfort, trust, feeling of safety, knowledge sharing and liability in modern production facilities. Proposals should specifically address gender, age, disability and other anthropometric and ergonomic considerations, and impacts across diverse demographic groups. Social partners (e.g. trade unions) may also be considered. Optionally, proposals may include test and experimentation environments such as living labs for validation.

Proposals should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination (adapted to the expected TRL of this topic).

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership Made in Europe.