HARMONICA

HARMONICA’s vision is to design and implement human-centric physical and cognitive augmentation prototypes and tools that significantly improve worker capacity in dynamic, hazardous recycling manufacturing environments and managers/supervisors in coaching, workflow optimisation, and process safety. These technologies will enhance shop floor awareness, perception, safety, and worker performance, while reducing discomfort, fatigue, and physical or psychological stress in hazardous environments such as advanced recycling facilities. We aim to develop safe, inclusive and responsive technology that transforms current inefficient augmentation technology hindering human- machine interaction, empowering workers and enhancing both individual and teamwork capabilities in recycling manufacturing systems.

HARMONICA explores and addresses four scientific gaps that have not been considered or thoroughly addressed in existing/on-going projects:

• Scientific gap 1: How to employ human physiological and social interaction models in recycling manufacturing environments: HARMONICA will analyse human cognitive and social interaction models in advanced recycling environments to identify which augmentation tools are needed to empower human managers and workers in recycling manufacturing. Consequently, HARMONICA will develop the most appropriate augmentation technologies that help empower human operators in dynamic and hazardous environments.

• Scientific gap 2: How multiple augmentation technologies empower human workers and managers, and which methods/metrics can be used to evaluate their performance and alignment to Industry 5.0 principles: HARMONICA will build physiological, cognitive, and socio-behavioural capability models and analyse human states and conditions under the empowerment of different augmentation technologies through innovative digital twin and living lab settings to formulate when and how human states require adjustment through augmentation technology to enhance human operators’ safety and efficiency. HARMONICA will define new assessment metrics to analyse the efficiency of augmentation technologies in recycling manufacturing environments and ensure they are aligned to Industry 5.0 principles.

• Scientific gap 3: How the effectiveness of augmentation technologies is impacted by variations in human and social background: HARMONICA will assess the needs of and receive feedback from
stakeholders (i.e., managers and workers) with different backgrounds (age, gender, culture, and skill) to design adaptive augmentation technologies that can adapt to and empower human operators regardless of their background and skill levels.

• Scientific gap 4: How can augmentation technologies improve worker career and job satisfaction and attract a younger generation into recycling manufacturing: HARMONICA develops trustworthy AI for hazard prediction and prevention, collaborative robotics for assisting humans with unsafe tasks, and adaptive human-machine interfaces for optimizing human-machine task allocation, training and skill upgrading. This creates more job opportunities, job profile matching, and makes the recycling sector more attractive to a younger generation.

Robotnik Automation (ROB), Spain, is responsible for the development
of advanced autonomous mobile manipulators supporting human–robot collaboration and physical augmentation. We need to provide RB-KAIROS adapted to the project requirements that will collaborate with humans in recycling related tasks like: unscrewing, disassembly, pick and place objects, transport of objects etc.