@article{SchmittEngelmannManghisietal., author = {Schmitt, Jan and Engelmann, Bastian and Manghisi, Vito Modesto and Wilhelm, Markus and Uva, Antonello and Fiorentino, Michele}, title = {Towards gestured-based technologies for human-centred smart factories}, series = {International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing}, volume = {36}, journal = {International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing}, number = {1}, issn = {1362-3052}, pages = {110 -- 127}, abstract = {Despite the increasing degree of automation in industry, manual or semi-automated are commonly and inevitable for complex assembly tasks. The transformation to smart processes in manufacturing leads to a higher deployment of data-driven approaches to support the worker. Upcoming technologies in this context are oftentimes based on the gesture-recognition, - monitoring or - control. This contribution systematically reviews gesture or motion capturing technologies and the utilization of gesture data in the ergonomic assessment, gesture-based robot control strategies as well as the identification of COVID-19 symptoms. Subsequently, two applications are presented in detail. First, a holistic human-centric optimization method for line-balancing using a novel indicator - ErgoTakt - derived by motion capturing. ErgoTakt improves the legacy takt-time and helps to find an optimum between the ergonomic evaluation of an assembly station and the takt-time balancing. An optimization algorithm is developed to find the best-fitting solution by minimizing a function of the ergonomic RULA-score and the cycle time of each assembly workstation with respect to the workers' ability. The second application is gesture-based robot-control. A cloud-based approach utilizing a generally accessible hand-tracking model embedded in a low-code IoT programming environment is shown.}, language = {en} } @article{WilhelmManghisiUvaetal., author = {Wilhelm, Markus and Manghisi, Vito Modesto and Uva, Antonello and Fiorentino, Michele and Br{\"a}utigam, Volker and Engelmann, Bastian and Schmitt, Jan}, title = {ErgoTakt: A novel approach of human-centered balancing of manual assembly lines}, series = {Procedia CIRP}, volume = {97}, journal = {Procedia CIRP}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2020.05.250}, pages = {354 -- 360}, abstract = {Although the increasing use of automation in industry, manual assembly stations are still common and, in some situations, even inevitable. Current practice in manual assembly lines is to balance them using the takt-time of each workstation and harmonize it. However, this approach mostly does not include ergonomic aspects and thus it may lead to workforce musculoskeletal disorders, extended leaves, and demotivation. This paper presents a holistic human-centric optimization method for line balancing using a novel indicator ΜΆ the ErgoTakt. ErgoTakt improves the legacy takt-time and helps to find an optimum between the ergonomic evaluation of an assembly station and its balance in time. The authors used a custom version of the ErgoSentinel Software and a Microsoft Kinect depth camera to perform online and real-time ergonomic assessment. An optimization algorithm is developed to find the best-fitting solution by minimizing a function of the ergonomic RULA-value and the cycle time of each assembly workstation with respect to the worker's ability. The paper presents the concept, the system-setup and preliminary evaluation of an assembly scenario. The results demonstrate that the new approach is feasible and able to optimize an entire manual assembly process chain in terms of both, economic aspects of a well-balanced production line as well as the ergonomic issue of long term human healthy work.}, language = {en} }