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With the construction sector primed to incorporate such advanced technologies as artificial intelligence (AI), robots, and machines, these advanced tools will require a deep understanding of human–robot trust dynamics to support safety and productivity. Although other disciplines have broadly investigated human trust-building with robots, the discussion within the construction domain is still nascent, raising concerns because construction workers are increasingly expected to work alongside robots or cobots, and to communicate and interact with drones. Without a better understanding of how construction workers can appropriately develop and calibrate their trust in their robotic counterparts, the implementation of advanced technologies may raise safety and productivity issues within these already-hazardous jobsites. Consequently, this study conducted a systematic review of the human–robot trust literature to (1) understand human–robot trust-building in construction and other domains; and (2) establish a roadmap for investigating and fostering worker–robot trust in the construction industry. The proposed worker–robot trust-building roadmap includes three phases: static trust based on the factors related to workers, robots, and construction sites; dynamic trust understood via measuring, modeling, and interpreting real-time trust behaviors; and adaptive trust, wherein adaptive calibration strategies and adaptive training facilitate appropriate trust-building. This roadmap sheds light on a progressive procedure to uncover the appropriate trust-building between workers and robots in the construction industry.
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The effect of challenging work environment on human-robot interaction and cognitive load during teleoperation: a case study of teleoperated excavator in a virtual experiment
Construction sites typically involve a risky, dynamic, and challenging work environment. Despite numerous safety training programs and regulations, accidents still occur in construction sites, especially when working with construction robotics. To alleviate this problem in the most fundamental way, teleoperation that allows operators to work remotely has been studied. Teleoperated construction robots have the great potential to be used in various contexts for extreme and hazardous construction sites. Here, work conditions for human-robot interaction in construction differ from those in other structured and controlled environments like manufacturing factories, and thus there is a need for the associated studies. In this paper, we aim to measure and analyze the performance of human-robot interaction and the cognitive load of human operators in dynamic and challenging construction work environments (hazardous risks such as underground utility strikes and working under time constraints).
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- Award ID(s):
- 2026574
- PAR ID:
- 10385448
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The 2022 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Shane, Jennifer S; Madson, Katherine M; Mo, Yunjeong Leah; Poleacovschi, Cristina; Sturgill, Roy E (Ed.)Teleoperation is widely used in hazardous and uncertain site settings, allowing scheduled procedures to be carried out across long distances while workers are away from the sites. Teleoperators in off-sites collect both the site information and feedback from the interfaces which provide synthesized information that a robot collects. This interface mainly conveys visionary information for the operator’s intuitiveness such as the spatial awareness of objects and surroundings. To achieve a rich visual understanding of the site, the interface should fully contain and intuitively convey the associated contextual information. Excessive or unintuitive information not only makes it difficult for operators to exert their full potential but also increases their cognitive load. This study explores how different visual interface configurations affect operators’ work performance and their cognitive load during the teleoperation task. The findings from the experimental studies are expected to help develop human-centered interfaces for teleoperation in the context of construction tasks and provide the cornerstone for not only an intuitive but fruitfully informative interface in a provided task setting.more » « less
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With the advancement of automation and robotic technologies, the teleoperation has been leveraged as a promising solution for human workers in a hazardous construction work environment. Since human operators and construction sites are separated in a distance, teleoperation requires a seamless human-machine interface, an intermediate medium, to communicate between humans and machines in construction sites. Several types of teleoperation interfaces including conventional joysticks, haptic devices, graphic user interfaces, auditory interfaces, and tactile interfaces have been developed to control and command construction robotics remotely. The ultimate goal of human-machine interfaces for remote operations is to make intuitive sensory channels that can provide and receive enough information while reducing the associated cognitive and physical load on human operators. Previously developed interfaces have tried to achieve such goals, but each interface still has challenges that should be assessed for enhancing the future teleoperation application in construction workplaces. This paper examines different human-machine interfaces for excavator teleoperation in terms of its on-site usability and intuitiveness. The capabilities of the interfaces for excavator teleoperation are evaluated based on their limitations and requirements. The outcome is expected to provide better understanding of teleoperation interfaces for excavators and guiding future directions for addressing underlying challenges.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.22260/ICRA2022/0017
