Inclu5ion

Despite the strong societal efforts for the reduction of human physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments, people with disabilities continue to deal with daily discrimination and limited accessibility in physical and virtual environments.

These injustices prevent their full participation in society. In that regard, new methodologies for disability inclusiveness can be very effective, especially from the occupational point of view. Emerging and enabling technologies can provide enormous benefits and support in terms of inclusivity and equality in industrial contexts.

Industry 5.0 added sustainable concepts to the industrial revolution. It introduces a new paradigm of production: Human-centricity and resilience are promoted over efficiency and productivity. This allows the customization of the jobs according to the worker’s (special) needs and wants.

Manufacturing systems can be therefore adapted to suit the needs and diversity of people by implementing an inclusive approach and opening new opportunities for both people with disabilities and companies.

The proposed project aims at reducing the impairments of people with physical or cognitive disabilities in industrial or artisanal working contexts by assisting them with anthropocentric and emerging Industry 5.0 technologies.

By adopting a sociotechnical perspective, the main goal is to support non-expert technical designers by developing a new design methodology to be used for the creation of “disability-friendly”, human-centered, and technology-supported industrial workplaces. Outcomes will enhance the implementation of even more socially sustainable and disability-inclusive workplaces, where Industry 5.0 technologies are used to assist people by adding even more value to the human.

During the first two years of the project

During the first six months, the project focused on identifying and categorizing assistive technologies based on the scientific literature. Five main areas were identified: robotics, extended reality, physical support systems, reconfigurable devices/workstations, and multimodal human-machine interfaces (HMI). A second key objective was the design, translation, and distribution of a multilingual online questionnaire, which was ethically approved and widely distributed to experts, social cooperatives, and companies. The questionnaire provided valuable information on the adoption and effectiveness of these technologies. These results were supplemented by a public workshop at the NOI Techpark, which aimed to communicate the project’s objectives and content and to recruit potential companies and social cooperatives for collaboration during the experimental phase. The results of the questionnaire and the workshop, along with the definition of use cases and key performance indicators (KPIs), formed a solid foundation for the subsequent project phases and strengthened the socio-technical perspective.

In the subsequent phase, the project focused on developing a design methodology for supported and inclusive workplaces. The results identified requirements in the areas of accessibility, human-centered design, and performance. These requirements were addressed by applying the Axiomatic Design (AD) method, with the customer needs (CNs) identified through the online questionnaire serving as the starting point for the design process. According to AD, the CNs are translated into high-level functional requirements (FRs) and then broken down into corresponding design parameters (DPs) through a structured mapping process. The methodology thus makes it possible to derive design guidelines at various levels of detail and to ensure that inclusivity is integrated into the different phases of the design process. The identified KPIs relate to the accessibility and usability of the proposed technologies, well-being through a human-centered approach, and performance in terms of productivity and autonomy for people with disabilities.

Over the course of the first two years of the project, partnerships with companies and social cooperatives were further strengthened. This led to the definition and gradual implementation of three key industrial use cases: an assembly workstation supported by projected augmented reality, featuring different levels of assembly instructions for assembling a pneumatic piston; a collaborative robotics application for assembling hydraulic filters, in which the robot assists the operator with repetitive or ergonomically demanding tasks; and a guided logistics process for order picking, supported by wearable augmented reality technology and designed to include users with autism. In parallel, preparatory work was conducted on a multimodal human-machine interface based on eye tracking and a hand-tracking camera. The goal is to estimate the operator’s fatigue and capabilities in near real time, as well as to dynamically adjust the level of assistance in the future. The implementation of the case studies was accompanied by preliminary tests with healthy participants, which served to validate the approach and generate further scientific findings.

In the final year of the project

During the final phase of the project, the implementation of the case studies will be completed, and experiments will be conducted with people with disabilities. The goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of assistive technologies and their impact on accessibility, usability, well-being, performance, and autonomy in the workplace.

 

Project details

Project name: Inclu5ion [CUP: F53C23000850003]

Funding programme: Research Südtirol/Alto Adige

Budget: € 392.987,35 (total), € 210.658,68 (Fraunhofer Italia)

Project partners: Fraunhofer Italia (Lead partner - Prof. Dominik Matt, Principal Investigator , M.Sc. Isabella Soraruf, Project Manager , M.Sc. Leonardo Venturoso, Team member, Ph.D. Marco Todescato, Team member), Libera Università di Bolzano (Prof. Erwin Rauch, Principal Investigator , Ph.D. Luca Gualtieri, Project Manager, Prof. Patrick Dallasega, Team member, Ph.D. Carlo Caizzo, Team member)

Duration: 01.06.24 – ongoing