User experience and physiological response in Human-Robot Collaboration: a preliminary investigation

Within the context of Industry 4.0 and of the new emerging Industry 5.0, human factors are becoming increasingly important, especially in Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC). This paper provides a novel study focused on the human aspects involved in industrial HRC by exploring the efects of various HRC setting factors. In particular, this paper aims at investigating the impact of industrial HRC on user experience, afective state, and stress, assessed through both subjective measures (i.e., questionnaires) and objective ones (i.e., physiological signals). A collaborative assembly task was implemented with difer ent confgurations, in which the robot movement speed, the distance between the operator and the robot workspace, and the control of the task execution time were varied. Forty-two participants were involved in the study and provided feedbacks on interaction quality and their afective state. Participants’ physiological responses (i.e., electrodermal activity and heart rate) were also collected non-invasively to monitor the amount of stress generated by the interaction. Analysis of both subjective and objective responses revealed how the confguration factors considered infuence them. Robot movement speed and control of the task execution time resulted to be the most infuential factors. The results also showed the need for customization of HRC to improve ergonomics, both psychological and physical, and the well-being of the operator.