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In human–robot collaborative assembly tasks, it is necessary to properly balance skills to maximize productivity. Human operators can contribute with their abilities in dexterous manipulation, reasoning and problem solving, but a bounded workload (cognitive, physical, and timing) should be assigned for the task. Collaborative robots can provide accurate, quick and precise physical work skills, but they have constrained cognitive interaction capacity and low dexterous ability. In this work, an experimental setup is introduced in the form of a laboratory case study in which the task performance of the human–robot team and the mental workload of the humans are analyzed for an assembly task. We demonstrate that an operator working on a main high-demanding cognitive task can also comply with a secondary task (assembly) mainly developed for a robot asking for some cognitive and dexterous human capacities producing a very low impact on the primary task. In this form, skills are well balanced, and the operator is satisfied with the working conditions.

a b s t r a c tWhen we develop an input device for users to communicate with computers, we have to take into account that end-users must consider the utilization of the device to be effective, efficient and satisfactory. Users whose expectations are unmet by the interface will tend to abandon it. In this paper we present a vision-based interface for motor-impaired users; a multidisciplinary group developed this interface. The user's preferences are a critical issue when selecting an access device; therefore, user requirements should be included in the design. Usability evaluation should be integrated into relevant phases of software development. In order to evaluate the design, we present a process with multiple user studies at different development stages. We describe the combination of a development project and its implementation, with user experience considerations embedded in the process. Finally, we studied the performance of the interface through several tests, paying special attention to satisfaction and fatigue. From our results we observed that although several users found the interface tiring, their satisfaction level was encouraging, suggesting the interface is usable.