Communicating through avatars in Industry 5.0: a focus group study on human-robot collaboration

  • The integration of collaborative robots (cobots) in industrial settings raises concerns about worker well-being, particularly due to reduced social interactions. Avatars - designed to facilitate worker interactions and engagement - are promising solutions to enhance the human-robot collaboration (HRC) experience. However, real-world perspectives on avatar-supported HRC remain unexplored. To address this gap, we conducted a focus group study with employees from a German manufacturing company that uses cobots. Before the discussion, participants engaged with a scripted, industry-like HRC demo in a lab setting. This qualitative approach provided valuable insights into the avatar’s potential roles, improvements to its behavior, and practical considerations for deploying them in industrial workcells. Our findings also emphasize the importance of personalized communication and task assistance. Although our study’s limitations restrict its generalizability, it serves as an initial step inThe integration of collaborative robots (cobots) in industrial settings raises concerns about worker well-being, particularly due to reduced social interactions. Avatars - designed to facilitate worker interactions and engagement - are promising solutions to enhance the human-robot collaboration (HRC) experience. However, real-world perspectives on avatar-supported HRC remain unexplored. To address this gap, we conducted a focus group study with employees from a German manufacturing company that uses cobots. Before the discussion, participants engaged with a scripted, industry-like HRC demo in a lab setting. This qualitative approach provided valuable insights into the avatar’s potential roles, improvements to its behavior, and practical considerations for deploying them in industrial workcells. Our findings also emphasize the importance of personalized communication and task assistance. Although our study’s limitations restrict its generalizability, it serves as an initial step in recognizing the potential of adaptive, context-aware avatar interactions in real-world industrial environments.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author:Stina KleinORCiDGND, Pooja PrajodORCiDGND, Katharina WeitzORCiDGND, Matteo Lavit Nicora, Dimitra Tsovaltzi, Elisabeth AndréORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:bvb:384-opus4-1279124
Frontdoor URLhttps://opus.bibliothek.uni-augsburg.de/opus4/127912
ISBN:979-8-4007-1397-2OPAC
Parent Title (English):CHIWORK '25 Adjunct: adjunct proceedings of the 4th Annual Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work, June 23-25, 2025, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Publisher:Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Place of publication:New York, NY
Editor:Shadan Sadeghian, Abdallah "Abdo" El Ali, Carine Lallemand, Philipp Wintersberger, Erin Solovey
Type:Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2025
Publishing Institution:Universität Augsburg
Release Date:2026/02/04
First Page:1
Last Page:8
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3707640.3731923
Institutes:Fakultät für Angewandte Informatik
Fakultät für Angewandte Informatik / Institut für Informatik
Fakultät für Angewandte Informatik / Institut für Informatik / Lehrstuhl für Menschzentrierte Künstliche Intelligenz
Nachhaltigkeitsziele
Nachhaltigkeitsziele / Ziel 9 - Industrie, Innovation und Infrastruktur
Dewey Decimal Classification:0 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke / 00 Informatik, Wissen, Systeme / 004 Datenverarbeitung; Informatik
Licence (German):CC-BY 4.0: Creative Commons: Namensnennung