Ergonomic and performance factors for Human-robot collaborative workplace design and evaluation

In recent years, there have been more and more collaborative workplaces in different types of manufacturing systems. Although the introduction of collaborative workplaces can be cost-effective, there is still much uncertainty about how such workplaces affect the capacity of the rest of production system. The article presents the importance of introducing collaborative workplaces in manual assembly operations where the production capacities are already limited. With the simulation modelling method, the evaluation of the introduction impact of collaborative workplaces on manual assembly operations that represent bottlenecks in the production process is presented. The research presents two approaches to workplace performance evaluation, both simulation modelling and a real-world collaborative workplace example, as a basis of a detailed time study. The main findings are comparisons of simulation modelling results and a study of a real-world collaborative workplace, with graphically and numerically presented parameters describing the utilization of production capacities, their efficiency and financial justification. The research confirms the expediency of the collaborative workplaces use and emphasise the importance of further research in the field of their technological and sociological impacts.

The Importance of Cobot Speed and Acceleration on the Manufacturing System Efficiency

Objective.Effective characterization of neural complexity during motor execution tasks enhances understanding of maladaptive cortical reorganization in stroke and inform targeted rehabilitation. While traditional EEG analyses often do not consider nonlinear temporal dynamics, we introduce a recurrence based computational framework to quantify cortical complexity during hierarchical motor tasks. Here, we evaluate contralesional motor system engagement in stroke survivors using recurrence quantification analysis (RQA), ensuring sensitivity to nonlinear and temporally structured cortical activity.Approach. RQA was applied to EEG signals recorded during shoulder abduction (SABD) at 20% and 40% torque levels to characterize nonlinear cortical dynamics and quantify complexity distinguishing adaptive from maladaptive motor system engagement. Spatially resolved recurrence metrics were compared between stroke and control participants to elucidate compensatory cortical reorganization linked to motor impairment and hierarchical task demands.Results. Our findings show a statistically significant increase in EEG signal complexity within the contralesional hemisphere of stroke participants, particularly under higher SABD loads. Consistent with previous studies, we observed abnormal muscle coactivation patterns between proximal and distal muscles, along with distinct shifts in EMG vector direction in stroke-impaired limbs. These shifts in coactivation patterns suggest constraints in muscle coactivation patterns resulting from losses in corticofugal projections and upregulated brainstem pathways.Significance. We introduce a novel application of RQA to quantify nonlinear EEG complexity during motor execution in chronic stroke. Our results show that increased EEG complexity reflects greater recruitment of contralesional motor pathways, indicating maladaptive cortical reorganization linked to impaired motor control. Unlike traditional spectral or connectivity-based EEG signal processing methods, RQA quantifies temporally evolving, nonlinear recurrence dynamics, serving as a marker of maladaptive contralesional motor recruitment, positioning RQA as a promising, clinically meaningful, and computationally efficient tool to evaluate cortical dynamics and guide targeted neurorehabilitation strategies aimed at minimizing maladaptive plasticity.

Collaborative design methods are widely regarded as effective ways to involve diverse voices in the design process. Recent design-oriented research highlights disparities in the effort and types of engagement required by different stakeholder groups participating in collaborative design activities. This work inspired us to audit our own co-design practices in a multidisciplinary digital mental health project with faith healers in Ghana. We conducted a self-assessment of contextual interviews and co-design sessions with faith healers drawing on Clark’s sociolinguistic theory of common ground to identify verbal coordination practices and patterns. We offer insights about the nature of our own coordination practices as an example of the ways that attending to the trajectory of coordination throughout a collaborative design process can provide an important tool for multiple voices to contribute to complex high risk/high reward interventions. We discuss implications of this approach to self-assessment for our ongoing project and as a case study of coordination made legible to diverse stakeholders.

The current interior design of commercial buildings is facing innovative challenges, requiring a balance between aesthetics, functionality, and economic benefits. The design industry faces challenges in interdisciplinary integration, lack of standardized processes, and limitations of traditional design methods in complex situations. Although virtual reality technology provides new solutions, its integration difficulty, cost, and operational complexity constrain its widespread application. This study introduces a digitally twin-based augmented reality (AR) collaborative indoor design framework, addressing the decomposition of spatial planning for the complexity inherent in design processes. Subsequently, contextual data in the indoor design process is structured into an indoor design knowledge graph to elucidate information transmission and iterative mechanisms during collaborative design, thereby enhancing the situational adaptability of AR collaborative design. Utilizing a root anchor-based collaborative approach, multiple designers engage in spatial design collaboration within the AR environment. Real-time knowledge and data facilitated by the design knowledge graph contribute to collaborative decision-making, ensuring the quality and efficiency of collaborative design. Finally, exemplified by a complex interior design project for a commercial space, an AR-based collaborative digital twin (DT) interior design system is established, validating the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed methodology. Through this approach, designers can preview and modify designs in a virtual environment, ultimately reducing errors, shortening design cycles, lowering costs, and enhancing user satisfaction.

The paper is devoted to the interplay issues between ontology engineering and cognitive psychology. It describes the study targeted at new visual structuring paradigm of ontology development. Such approach is formed with regard to personal cognitive features. The research was performed within the KOMET (knowledge and content structuring via methods of collaborative ontology design) project. Two phases of research have been done within the project. First was devoted to study of correlations between the expert's personal cognitive style features and the peculiarities of expert's subject domain ontology development procedure. The second deals with research on the relationship between the expert's individual cognitive style and the collective ontology design (including the design performed in groups consisting of experts either of similar or of different cognitive styles). The results of this research project can be applied to organising the collaborative ontology design, data and content structuring and other group analytical work.

In this paper we discuss the notion of a learning methodology and situate this within the wider frame of learning design or “Designing for Learning”. We discuss existing work within this broad area by trying to categorize different approaches and interpretations and we present our development of particular ‘mediating design artefacts’. We discuss what can be viewed as a lack of attention paid to integrating the preferred teaching styles and learning philosophies of practitioners into design tools, and present a particular method for learning design; the COllaborative E-learning Design method (CoEd). We describe how this method has been adopted as part of a learning methodology building on concepts and models presented in the other symposium papers, in particular those of active, problem based learning and web 2.0-technologies. The challenge of designing on the basis of an explicit learning philosophy, and still trying to develop a design method or tool with a certain general applicability is discussed at the end of the paper. Experiences from a recent design workshop are described and discussed, with a focus on what specific steps have been taken in order to apply the method successfully within the EAtrain2 project as a way of enabling teachers and practitioners to collaboratively design courses. As part of the collaborative e-learning design (CoED) method and the broader learning methodology the authors held a workshop for the project partners in the EATrain2 project, and the results and inputs from this workshop will be briefly discussed in this paper and in the symposium presentation.

How can architectural pedagogy engage climate change and other global challenges as we teach our students to design specific, sustainable buildings and places where all species can thrive? How can we ethically collaborate across diverse disciplines, cultures, and geographies? This paper explores my experiences at the University of Virginia devel-oping an Indigenous Ecologies pedagogy, which combines place-based learning with participatory action research, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and collaborative design methods. Students in my transdisciplinary seminars and studios collaboratively designed a Dakota Cultural Center with the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate on their Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota, and The Black Power Station with a Xhosa artist/activist collective in Makhanda, South Africa. University students developed cultural competency, environmental literacy, and new ways of co-producing knowl¬edge, including participatory cultural mapping, storytelling, and practices of decolonization. Combining TEK with norma¬tive architectural knowledge and methods can produce richer epistemologies, informed choices about building materials, and holistic strategies for climate change adaptation. This paper compares pedagogical strategies and contributes to socio-ecological systems research in architecture. These teaching experiments through an Indigenous Ecologies lens sought to change the way students learn to make the world, through empathy, imagination, and activism.

Collaborative design of multi-type parameters for design and operational stage matching in fuel cells

This paper reviews and reappraises the current research on the cognitive task analysis methodology for job or task design and analysis. Specifically, it classifies the current cognitive task analysis methods for job or task design and analysis, sorts out commonalities and differences among all these cognitive task analysis methodology for job and task design and analysis by conducting pros and cons comparisons, and provides guidelines in selecting cognitive task analysis methods for job and task design and analysis. Moreover, based on the current literature review, a validated human-centered information-processing model for cognitive task performance was developed based on human information processing theory. This new model focuses on identifying all cognitive aspects of human performance in technical work, with the goal of assisting job (re)design to increase human job performance.

Using hierarchical task decomposition as a grammar to map actions in context: Application to forecasting systems in supply chain planning

On the use of Virtual Reality for a human-centered workplace design

Presents some factors that influence the design of workplace and worker loading in the process of sewing garments. Researches both existent and suggested work methods in workplace design and worker’s loading, with regard to sewing men’s shirts. The use of the suggested working method enables minimization of measured working time of the analysed technological operation of 21.77 per cent. The estimation, by OVACO working postures analysing system, the OWAS method shows that worker’s loading for a newly designed workplace compared to the suggested working method brings, in principle, advantages for the workers.

An understanding of cities as open systems whose agents act on them simultaneously from below and above, influencing urban processes by their interaction with them and with each other, is replacing the simplistic debate on urban participation which asks whether cities should be organized bottom-up or top-down. This conceptualization of cities as complex systems calls for new collaborative city-making methods: a combination of collaborative planning (which already embraces various agencies and derives decision-making from negotiations between them) and collaborative design (existing methods rely on rule-based iterative processes which control spatial outcomes). While current collaborative planning methods are open and interactive, they fail to simulate realistic power negotiations in the evolution of the physical environments they plan; collaborative design methods fall short in modelling the decision-making mechanisms of the physical environments they control. This research is dedicated to building an open negotiation and design method for cities as self-organizing systems that bridges this gap. Gaming as a tool for knowledge creation and negotiation serves as an interface between the more abstract decision-making and material city-making. Rarely involved in the creation of our environment, it has the unexplored potential of combining the socio-spatial dimensions of self-organizing urban processes. Diverse agents, the collaborations and conflicts within and between interest groups, and the parameters provided by topological data can all be combined in an operational form in gaming: potentially a great unifier of multiple stakeholder negotiations and individual design aspirations through which to generate popularly informed policies or design. The simple language and rules of games will allow jargon-free communication between stakeholders, experts and non-experts alike. The interactive and iterative nature of city gaming encourages the development of collective intelligence, derived from the real lives of players to be redeployed in their real urban futures. Vitally, city gaming enables the negotiation of this future, as players with conflicting interests are given an opportunity to develop compatible, even shared, visions. By transforming serious issues into a playful and engaging (although no less serious) experience, city gaming unlocks difficult conversations and helps to build communities in the long term. The urban design, policy and action plans generated collaboratively through gaming will increase social coherence and local agency, as well as cutting costs and time in urban development processes. This thesis proposes Generative City Gaming as an innovative urban planning and design method built on the tradition of serious gaming. Going beyond the educational scope of other serious games, the ultimate aim of city gaming is to become operational in urban processes – a goal in the process of making a reality since 2008, when Generative City Gaming was first applied to a real urban questions in the Netherlands, later expanding to Istanbul, Tirana, Brussels, and Cape Town. “Negotiation and Design for the Self-Organizing City” reports on six of the twelve city games played to date which were instrumental in the evolution of the method: Play Almere Haven tested whether a game based on self-organizing mechanisms could provide an urban order; Play Rotterdam questioned whether game-derived design could be implemented in urban renewal of a central Rotterdam neighborhood; Yap-Yaşa was played with real urban stakeholders for transforming Istanbul’s self-built neighbourhoods; Play Noord investigated a masterplan on hold could be fixed by unconventional stakeholders; Play Oosterwold jumped up a scale to test the rules of a flexible urban expansion plan for 4500 hectares; Play Van Gendthallen, was the first to enable stakeholders to make the leap from design to reality within the game process. The Generative City Gaming method evolves continuously. Every new case tests and proves the applicability of city gaming to a specific urban complexity, while challenging the method to adapt itself and develop new features tailored to tackle each unique urban question. Through use, this gaming method is finding its place within existing city-making procedures in a number of countries. The next big question is whether cyclical and open-ended city gaming can move beyond being a consultancy and research tool to become the principal medium of processing and executing city planning.

O presente trabalho propõe uma reflexão integrada de pesquisas relacionadas às práticas participativas no design e a educação participativa Freireana, considerando os métodos colaborativos do design e enfatizando as relações existentes entre seus princípios metodológicos e as do educador Paulo Freire, acerca de uma educação libertadora, dialógica e socialmente produtiva. A base de sua fundamentação analisa as relações entre abordagens metodológicas do design, sendo a Técnica do Brainstorming e as fases do Design Thinking, associadas a pressupostos Freireanos, estabelecidas à luz de práticas pedagógicas coletivas e partilhadas, que tecem um universo comum entre todos os sujeitos envolvidos na busca de soluções para problemas.