Acceptance of Industrial Collaborative Robots by People With Disabilities in Sheltered Workshops

Abstract

The integration of people with disabilities into the working world is an important, yet challenging field of research. While different inclusion efforts exist, people with disabilities are still under-represented in the open labor market. This paper investigates the approach of using a collaborative robot arm to support people with disabilities with their reintegration into the workplace. However, there is currently little literature about the acceptance of an industrial robot by people with disabilities and in cases where a robot leads to stress, fear, or any other form of discomfort, this approach is not feasible. For this reason, a first user study was performed in a sheltered workshop to investigate the acceptance of a robot arm by workers with disabilities. As a first step in this underdeveloped field, two main aspects were covered. Firstly, the reaction and familiarization to the robot arm within a study situation was closely examined in order to separate any effects that were not caused by the moving robot. Secondly, the reaction toward the robot arm during collaboration was investigated. In doing so, five different distances between the robot arm and the participants were considered to make collaboration in the workplace as pleasant as possible. The results revealed that it took the participants about 20 min to get used to the situation, while the robot was immediately accepted very well and did not cause fear or discomfort at any time. Surprisingly, in some cases, short distances were accepted even better than the larger distances. For these reasons, the presented approach showed to promise for future investigations.

An Inclusive Workplace Approach to Disability through Assistive Technologies: A Systematic Review and Thematic Analysis of the Literature

“…In most of the articles, technology (see Table 1) was conceived as a useful tool for performing a task [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58] and/or for the reduction of a physical [41,42,45,47,53,55,59,60], cognitive [43,44,48,49,54,56,[61][62][63][64][65], or mental health [66] accommodation/participation [48,[50][51][52]54,56,57,60,64,65,[67][68]…”

“…Only a few cases discussed the impact of technology use on financial issues [76], employment inclusion [70], identity [67,77], self-determination/empowerment [43,[78][79][80], and ethical issues [81]. The different forms concerned the use of AT as mobile support tools [42,47,51,61,65,66], cognitive assistance systems [41,43,44,70], apps or technological devices [49,53,65,66,74], robotics [45], brain-computer interface [55], social media [69,80], eHealth [68], information and communication technologies (ICTs) [52,63,78,79], and virtual reality (VR) [59,71,72,77].…”

Adapt or Perish? Exploring the Effectiveness of Adaptive DoF Control Interaction Methods for Assistive Robot Arms

“…Robotic assistance is generally well-received by people with motor impairments. Drolshagen et al found that people with disabilities quickly accept working with robots, even if the robots are in close proximity [19]. Regarding ADLs specifically, Pascher et al conducted an ethnographic study with 15 participants with tetraplegia, multiple sclerosis, Locked-In Syndrome, and similar diseases [20].…”

My Caregiver the Cobot: Comparing Visualization Techniques to Effectively Communicate Cobot Perception to People with Physical Impairments

“…Both found that robotic devices are often designed to assist with several different activities of daily living, often resulting in larger robotic devices that frequently require a robotic arm mounted on a mobile unit. Drolshagen et al investigated the acceptance of robots in sheltered workshops, finding that robots are quickly accepted and close proximity is preferred [26]. Currently, a trend can be observed towards the research into cobots in domestic care to support people in their everyday lives [27][28][29][30][31][32].…”