Extending System Performance Past the Boundaries of Technical Maturity: Human-Agent Teamwork Perspective for Industrial Inspection

TL;DR

This paper presents a framework for enhancing human-agent teamwork in industrial inspection by translating work analysis into design patterns, enabling better collaboration and performance in Cyber-Physical-Social Systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework that converts detailed work analysis into design patterns to improve human-agent collaboration and organizational settings in CPSS for industry 4.0.

Findings

Identified technical capabilities of CPSS compared to expert work activities

Developed a collaborative framework for defining HAT configurations

Applied the framework to aircraft maintenance domain

Abstract

Cyber-Physical-Social Systems (CPSS) performance for industry 4.0 is highly context-dependent, where three design areas arise: the artifact itself, the human-agent collaboration, and the organizational settings. Current HF&E tools are limited to conceptualize and anticipate future human-agent work situations with a fine-grained perspective. This paper explores how rich in-sights from work analysis can be translated into formative design patterns that provide finer guidance in conceptualizing the human-agent collaboration and the organizational settings. The current manual work content elicited is disaggregated into functional requirements. Each function is then scrutinized by a multidisciplinary design team that decides its feasibility and nature (autonomy function, human function, or hybrid function). By doing so, we uncover the technical capabilities of the CPSS in comparison with subject-matter experts` work activity. We called this concept technological coverage. The framework thereof allows close collaboration with design stakeholders to define detailed HAT configurations. We then imagined joint activity scenarios based on end-users work activity, the technological capabilities, and the interaction requirements to perform the work. We use a study on technological innovation in the aircraft maintenance domain to illustrate the framework`s early phases