A Method for the Design of Lean Human-Robot Interaction

The high system flexibility necessary for the full automation of complex and unstructured tasks leads to increased complexity, thus higher costs. On the other hand, the effectiveness and performance of such systems decrease, explaining the unfulfilled potential of robotics in sectors such as intralogistics, where the benefits of a robotic solution rarely justify its costs. Taking the distance from the false idea that a task should be either fully automated, or fully manual, this paper presents a method for design of a lean human-robot interaction (HRI) with the objective of the “right level of automation”, where functions are divided among human and automated agents, so that the overall process gains in performances and/or costs. The proposed Quality Interaction Function Deployment method, thanks to its quantitative approach, serves three main purposes: (1) the design of a desired HRI that does not yet exist (development from scratch), (2) the re-engineering of an existing HRI and (3) the documentation of the whole design or re-engineering process. The 10 progressive steps of the method are presented and discussed with reference to their graphical tool: the House of Quality Interaction.