Guidelines for the integration of cognitive ergonomics in the design of human-centered and collaborative robotics applications

In the context of Industry 4.0, cognitive ergonomics is crucial for improving the working conditions and the psychosocial well-being of operators interacting with even more advanced and smart machines, as well as for the enhancement of production performances. Nevertheless, this topic is often neglected or ignored when implementing human-robot interaction in industrial settings. Starting from the results obtained from previous studies, this work proposes a structured process to develop and preliminarily validate a set of guidelines to support non-experts in human factors at the early stages of the design of human-centered and collaborative applications. A systematic analysis of the scientific literature has been performed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers to identify relevant results on the topic. Successively, the guidelines have been developed starting from such an analysis by considering the target group and the final aim of the work. This phase involved the analysis, classification, summary, and abstraction of relevant statements and results from the selected articles, as well as the update of the previous set of guidelines. The guidelines have been preliminarily validated by an external team of researchers currently doing research in the field. Qualitative feedback on understandability and relevance has been collected to improve the guidelines before further investigations.