Better together: human and robot co-workers

Better together: human and robot co-workers

More and more processes are being automated and digital. Self-driving delivery vehicles, such as a forklift, are exploring their way into many areas - and companies are reporting potential time and cost savings.

However, an interdisciplinary research team from Universities of Gottingen, Duisburg-Essen, and Trier have seen that the cooperation between humans and machines can work a lot better than just humans or just robotic teams.

 The results were published in the International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies.

The research team followed a process from production logistics, such as the specific supply of materials for use in cars or engineering industries.

 A team of human drivers, a team of robots and a mixed team of humans and robots were assigned transport work using vehicles. The time they needed was measured.

 The result was that the mixed team of humans and robots was able to defeat other teams; This coordination of procedures was the most efficient and the cause of the least accidents.

 It was quite unexpected because the highest level of efficiency is often considered to be related to those systems which are completely automated.

"It brings an important ray of hope, considering the efficiency in all discussions related to automation and digitization," says Professor Matthias Clump of Gottingen University.

There will be many scenarios and uses in the future, where the mixed team of robots and humans is better than the robot machine system. 

At least, the high degree of the dramatic loss of a job is not appropriate from our perspective."

Researchers on various aspects of business administration, computer science and sociology of work and industry highlighted the requirements for successful human-machine interaction.

 In many corporate and business situations, decisions will continue to be governed by the people. Researchers have therefore concluded that companies should pay more attention to their employees in the technical implementation of automation.