User-centred adaptive system to support frail people in manufacturing

Recently the diffusion of communicating technologies and sensors in manufacturing enables a huge quantity of data available in real time. Contemporarily, population aging is affecting also the working population, disturbing their usual activities and lowering their performance. Those trends are particularly interesting especially in those industrial sectors where machines are complex to use and control, and operators must be highly skilled and reactive. The research presents the definition of a user-centred system that exploits on one hand data available from a sensors and control devices, and on the other hand a knowledge-based system able to consider the specific manufacturing conditions (about the operators and the surrounding environment) and to automatically adapt its features according to the specific user needs. The system is developed and tested by means of an industrial case study focusing on machine tools: in this case the mew adaptive system allows also older operators to carry out highly specialized jobs successfully and improve user satisfaction and global productivity.