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Injection molding is widely used to produce plastic components with large lot size. However, guaranteeing consistency and quality of parts in injection molding is challenging. Failures occur due to variation during injection cycles. Thus, real-time detection of failures will have a high impact on quality and productivity. This article is focused on Smart tHermoplastic injectION (SHION), a cloud-based Digital Twin supported by AI-based control of process parameters. Process parameters and their interrelationship with quality failure were studied and used to generate models for real-time prediction of part quality. Two injection manufacturing lines in industry were chosen for data acquisition, implementation, and validation of the Digital Twin. While SHION successfully predicted faulty products in real time, adoption of traditional Cloud-centric Internet of Things approaches poses unforeseen practical challenges such as exposure to risk of losing data due to network issues and prohibitive cost of regularly transferring a large amount data to Cloud services.

DIGITbrain is an EU innovation program to give SMEs easy access to Digital Twins (DTs). Compared to the digital twin concept, which is already increasingly used by manufacturing companies today, the DIGITbrain concept will go one step further by developing the 'Digital Product Brain' which will memorise physical and digital events throughout the entire life cycle of a production line or a machine. This study is aimed to inform the design of DIGITbrain through user involvement, by introducing the concept of DIGITbrain to potential stakeholders, and identify contexts of use, issues, and benefits from the perspective of identified stakeholders.

The future’s industrial workforce will be a product of today’s society. As manufacturing evolves to incorporate digital manufacturing technologies (DMTs), addressing societal concerns surrounding these technologies will support ethical and effective implementation.Using the ContraVision technique, we developed two videos showing fictional, futuristic utopian and dystopian perspectives on DMTs. These videos were used to elicit feedback from the public on perceptions of these technologies. Results showed that regardless of the utopic or dystopic condition, participants acknowledged benefits of such technologies despite expressing concerns, specifically identifying issues around ethical implementation and data security.

Virtual environments (VEs) offer potential benefits to health and safety training: exposure to dangerous (virtual) environments; the opportunity for experiential learning; and a high level of control over the training, in that aspects can be repeated or reviewed based on the trainee's performance. However, VEs are typically presented as audiovisual (AV) systems, whereas engagement of other senses could increase the immersion in the virtual experience. Moreover, other senses play a key role in certain health and safety contexts, for example the feel of heat and smell in a fire or smell in a fuel leak. A multisensory (MS) VE was developed, which provided simulated heat and smell in accordance with events in a virtual world. As users approached a virtual fire, they felt heat from three 2 kW heaters and smelled smoke from a scent diffuser. Behaviours in the MS VE demonstrated higher validity than those in a comparable AV VE, which ratings and verbatim responses indicated was down to a greater belief that participants were in a real fire. However, a study of the effectiveness of the MS VE as a training tool demonstrated that it did not offer benefits over AV as measured by a written knowledge test and subjective ratings of engagement, attitude towards health and safety and desire to repeat. However, the study found further evidence for the use of AV VEs in health and safety training, particularly as the subjective ratings were generally better than for PowerPoint based training. Despite the lack of evidence for MS simulation on traditional measures of training, the different attitudes and experiences of users suggest that it may have value as a system for changing trainees' attitudes towards their personal safety and awareness. This view was supported by feedback from industrial partners., Comment: IOSH, (2019)

Thousands of small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) employees in Indonesian tin mining companies work in dangerous environments without sufficient safety and health protections. This study’s aim was to investigate the identified factors, such as difficulty in communication among stakeholders (owner, manager, and worker), and workers’ negative attitudes towards and lack of knowledge in the use of personal protective equipment that inhibit the implementation of Participatory Ergonomics in Indonesian tin mining companies. Eighteen participants from five SMEs, encompassing three different roles, i.e. worker, owner and manager, participated in the interview study. The study revealed that the dissemination of occupational safety through a kinship approach and specific safety training were preferred to resolve communication, cultural and knowledge problems. The provision of clear definitions of roles and tasks and the allocation of time and resources were suggested as ways to empower workers and supervisors.

This case study documents the process followed to produce an alternative design of fire extinguisher. The work focuses on how informative data can be gathered for an ethically challenging product scenario through the use of a range of user-centred research methods, including: literature review; product evaluation; shadowing study; empathy study; expert interview; focus groups; and simulation equipment. Design improvements as a consequence of this process include: reductions in size and weight; refillable cartridges; single-handed operation; intuitive form; minimal clean up post-use; and better portability.

This paper presents a systematic review which explores the nature of assistive technologies currently being designed, developed and evaluated for dementia sufferers and their carers. A search through four large databases, followed by filtering by relevance, led to the identification and subsequent review of papers. Our review revealed that the majority of research in this area focuses on the support of day-to-day living activities, safety monitoring, memory aids and preventing social isolation. We conclude that the majority of AT currently available support day-to-day living activities, safety monitoring and assisting healthcare. However these devices merely address the ‘ease of living’ rather than focusing on ‘quality of life’. Although there are some devices which address social symptoms of Dementia, few address behavioural issues such as aggression and virtually none are available to support recreational activities. After discussing the implications of these findings, we finally reflect on general design issues for assistive technologies in this domain that became apparent during the review.

Automobile final assembly operators must be highly skilled to succeed in a low automation environment where multiple variants must be assembled in quick succession. This paper presents formal user studies conducted at OPEL and VOLVO Group to identify assembly training needs and a subset of requirements; and to explore potential features of a hypothetical game-based virtual training system. Stakeholder analysis, timeline analysis, link analysis, Hierarchical Task Analysis and thematic content analysis were used to analyse the results of interviews with various stakeholders (17 and 28 participants at OPEL and VOLVO, respectively). The results show that there is a strong case for the implementation of virtual training for assembly tasks. However, it was also revealed that stakeholders would prefer to use a virtual training to complement, rather than replace, training on pre-series vehicles.

Usability and trust have been observed to be related in several domains including web retail, information systems, and e-health. Trust in technology reflects beliefs about the attributes of a technology. Research has shown that trust is a key factor for the success of different systems – e.g., e-market, e-commerce, and social networks. Trust in technology can be supported or prevented by the perceived usability. Therefore, a low level of usability could compromise an individual’s trust in their use of a technology, resulting in a negative attitude towards a product. Even if this relationship has been seen as important in the fields listed above, there is limited research which empirically assesses trust and usability in virtual reality (VR). This work will present the first set of data on the relationship between usability and trust in VR. To gather this data, three different VR systems (Desktop 3D tool, CAVE, and a flight simulator) were tested. The findings show that (i) the best-known questionnaire to measure usability and trust could be applied to VR, (ii) there is a strong relationship between people’s satisfaction and trust in the use of VR, (iii) the relationship between usability and trust exists for different systems.

The consortium of the Innovate UK funded Live Augmented Reality Training Environments (LARTE) project, composed of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), Holovis International Ltd and The University of Nottingham, developed a new concept of a 3D multiplatform training system to train the procedural skills of service maintenance operators. The LARTE tool was designed on the basis of JLR needs and desiderata. This paper presents the functionalities of the initial prototype of LARTE training system, and outcomes of an evaluation study of the usability of the product.

New forms of connections between information and the physical world create opportunities for novel activities around heritage. This paper analyses a technological progression from linking data and content to locations, towards data captured by and linked to everyday objects. The former is exemplified by a study which explored community-based inquiry activities at a historical cemetery site. To explore the latter, we are developing a series of scenarios and visualisations to analyse peoples’ interpretations of contextual footprints – current and historical data gathered through the Internet of Things.

This paper presents a case study of an approach for predicting the human response to a domestic fire, using a combination of a talk-through technique (Kirwan and Ainsworth, 1992) and sequential analysis (Bakeman and Gottman, 1986). 20 participants were asked what actions they would take upon hearing a strange noise in their house, which they were later told was a fire. Each act was recorded and the results were compared to previous research in which people involved in real fires had been interviewed (Canter et al, 1980). A significant relationship was found between the frequency (Spearman’s rho: 0.694, p

The outcome of an emergency is largely determined by the behaviour of the people involved. To improve the safety of buildings and to increase the effectiveness of response procedures and training programmes it is often necessary to predict human behaviour in emergency situations. There are several approaches which can be used to make these predictions, but not all had previously been systematically analysed and therefore their appropriateness for any given application was unknown. This thesis describes an analysis of approaches for predicting human behaviour in emergencies. The research focussed on approaches which could be used by human factors professionals to extend the contribution this systems-oriented and user-focussed discipline can make to managing risks and reducing danger. The investigated approaches were evaluated against criteria for judging their quality, including validity, reliability, resources, sensitivity and ethics. In research conducted to test the approaches, fire drills, virtual environments (VEs) and a new talk-through approach, in which participants describe the hypothetical actions they would take in an emergency scenario, demonstrated potential for predicting behaviour in emergency situations. These approaches were subsequently evaluated in a standardised comparison, in which each one was applied to analyse the behaviour demonstrated during an evacuation from a university building. The observed frequencies of behaviour produced by each approach were significantly correlated, as were the sequences of behaviour. All of the approaches demonstrated replicability. The resources required to apply each approach were relatively low, especially for the talk-through approach. Based on the findings from this research, and drawing upon previous work from the scientific literature, guidance was provided for selecting approaches and methods for behavioural prediction in emergency situations. The talk-through approach is suitable for use during the concept phase of a design as it is quick to implement and requires low resources. VEs and simulation tools are more appropriate for design activities when detailed CAD models become available. Fire drills can provide useful measures of human behaviour in evacuation scenarios, but require a physical representation of the building or environment under investigation. Fire drills, VEs and simulation tools can be used to inform emergency response procedures. Predictions from all of the aforementioned approaches can support the development of training programmes. This guidance was previously unavailable to human factors professionals and now serves both to inform design work and support the evaluation of existing evacuation procedures and protocols.