Autor: Christoph Petzoldt

The increasing shortage of IT specialists requires lower-skilled employees to be empowered to perform tasks that previously required the involvement of experts. Industry 4.0’s emerging technologies for human-technology interaction and for the digital twin allow the design of intuitive user interfaces, system-independent communication interfaces, and user-specific assistance functionalities to meet this challenge. This paper presents a framework for configuring and monitoring of process flows for different production and logistics systems. By reviewing existing programming approaches, the paper derives requirements for the framework, describes its general architecture and the technical realization of the modular interaction interface. A prototypical implementation validates the presented concept on the example of a cellular conveyor system and a collaborative robot system.

The employee remains a key productivity element in industrial assembly. Assembly assistance systems have therefore become an integral part of employee support. This paper presents a novel assistance system that complements process-related assistance with human-centered functionalities. In addition, an approach for the systematic evaluation of assembly assistance systems is presented in this paper. The research is based on an evaluation of the current state of the art through systematic market analysis of available assembly assistance systems.

Due to the possibility of operator intervention, semi-autonomous systems allow for a better handling of complexity than fully autonomous systems. The use of a digital twin provides a novel interface for interaction with such systems. This paper describes the implementation of the control and user interface in a system with a digital twin. It is shown how the developed control architecture can be combined with different methods of human-machine interaction and virtual training. With this extended use of the control system by a digital twin the concept can be extended beyond the operation phase and can be used in other phases of the product life cycle.

In manual assembly, assistance systems are applied for the informational and physical support of employees. So far, assistance mainly focuses on some process-related aspects of assembly processes, while system acceptance, motivational perspectives are not considered. This article presents the gamification approach as a possibility to support the motivation of the workers. To facilitate a successful implementation of gamification, this paper presents a structured and method-based selection approach for game design elements.

The use of autonomous systems is not efficient in all applications due to variable system environments or small quantities. Semi-autonomous systems are able to bridge this gap. This article presents a digital twin-based approach for human-machine interaction using adaptive automation. A case study shows how a modular digital twin can support the operator of a CPS in specific tasks. This method allows for a distinction between short-term signal changes and long-term behavior modification. Thus, semi-autonomous systems can support operators in scenarios in which autonomous systems are not viable.