Simulation and participatory design of HRI work systems in the SOPHIA project

Human-robot interaction (HRI) systems have not yet been fully established as industrial applications. Besides technical and economical reasons, the perception of employees who interact with the system is crucial. The SOPHIA project aims at developing new forms of HRI applications and implementing them in concrete industrial use cases in order to increase the productivity and flexibility of existing work systems and to improve their ergonomics. The paper describes the methodical procedure using a 3D process simulation to define the technical and user-specific requirements. The simulation is combined with a systematic evaluation of the expectations of potential users of the HRI system to ensure a human-centred design. First results are presented based on an HRI implementation in a Dutch SME company.