ICAT Playdate — Enabling Human-Robot-Human Collaboration for Future Distributed Manufacturing

There is a growing manufacturing skills gap in the U.S. resulting from an aging workforce, lack of work-life balance, and geographical mismatches between where people live and where jobs are. Our work explores multiple humans collaborating physically with one another across geographical barriers, using robots as a medium to fill the manufacturing skills gap and enhance current and future distributed manufacturing. Human-robot-human collaboration, or simply HRH, will be a key to such geographically distributed manufacturing environments. Consider a jet engine repair expert, who is tele-operating a robot to diagnose and re-arrange parts, while local on-site workers are collaborating with the robot to align, carry, and attach each part. How does the remote teleoperator understand how to lift or carry an object with the onsite workers, and how do the workers recognize the teleoperator's intent through the actions of the robot?

As a start toward answering these questions, a multidisciplinary team with expertise in human factors & ergonomics, robotics, and industrial psychology will explore scenarios wherein one human is remotely controlling a robot that is collaborating with a second human, with emphasis on the human-technology partnership.