The Role of Robotics in the Future of Work
on behalf of the niosh future of work initiative thank you for joining us for today's webinar the role of robotics in the future of work my name is scott hinn and i will be your moderator before we get started i'd like to let all of our attendees know that the niosh future of work initiative which was launched in 2019 and its corresponding work group have many ongoing and upcoming activities the initiative launched its webinar series last year three webinars a year are hosted each focus on one of our nine future work priority topics this is the fifth webinar in the series you can view the recordings of the pre previous webinars on the niosh future of work initiative website also be sure to join us later on this year for one more webinar if you would like to learn more about the series and the initiative please visit our website so let's let's start out with our introductions first once again my name is scott hand i'm an industrial hygienist at niosh in cincinnati ohio i have been with niash for over 20 years my research interests focus on national exposure and hazard surveillance and analyzing and managing large data sets of occupational exposures i am also a member of the niosh future of work initiative work group and i will be your moderator your first speaker today will be miss don castillo don is the director of the division of safety research at niosh she's also the nash manager for the center for occupational robotics research the center for motor vehicle safety and a traumatic injury prevention program she is an injury epidemiologist and has authored numerous articles book chapters and technical documents on a variety of occupational injury topics including occupational injuries among young workers older workers firefighters and workplace violence ms castillo received her master of public health and epidemiology from the university of california los angeles the second speaker today will be dr chima naji chuma is an assistant professor in the department of civil construction and environmental engineering at the university of alabama tuscaloosa he holds a bachelor's degree in the building and building for from emo state university and an mba from oregon state university's college of business and a master's and phd degree in civil engineering from oregon state university his research focuses on generating foundational insight on human behavior as well as formulating strategies and developing decision support tools that enhance construction safety and health human machine interactions construction automation sustainable construction and workforce development in different construction environments chuma is also a member of the american society of civil engineers the american society of safety professionals the national society of black engineers and the precast concrete institute and with dot dawn thanks for joining us today and i'll hand it over to you um i very much appreciate the opportunity to be part of this webinar next slide so to provide an orientation for where robotics lies within the niosh future work initiative this slide shows the three interconnected priority topics for the initiative workplace and red at the top work in green in the middle and workforce and orange at the bottom and robotics is the subtopic for the work priority addressing changes in how work is and will be done artificial intelligence and other technologies are included in this priority area and are integrated with robotics and not mutually exclusive next slide so this is an outline for my presentation i will discuss trends in the use of robots at work and the implications for worker safety and health provide information about the niosh center for occupational robotics research provide an overview of research needs identified by the center and our research portfolio then end with what can be done to foster worker safety as robotics technology advances and robots become more commonplace next slide so first trends in occupational robots and implications for worker safety and health next slide so this slide has data from the international federation of robotics it shows that the number of robots being manufactured for industrial operations has grown steadily over the last decade with more than 3 million robots available in 2020 across the world next line most of these robots are traditional robots that have been used for decades for operations such as welding painting and assembly traditional robots are large they're powerful and they typically are kept separate from workers by cages or other engineering controls next slide this physical separation of robots and human workers has been quite effective and traditional industrial robots have had a very good safety record while there are challenges in identifying the numbers of workers killed and injured by robots niosh did an analysis of fatality data using keyword searches that estimated 61 robot related deaths between 1992 and 2015. this is less than one percent of the more than 190 000 workplace injury deaths during that time frame and we are currently updating these statistics next slide this slide with data on robot sales shows that there is a small but growing market of a new type of robot collaborative robot shown in purple with sales of 22 000 collaborative robots in 2020 next slide this is a video of a collaborative robot they are not confined to cages they are designed to work alongside and in collaboration with human workers new types of worker protection strategies are being developed for these new types of robots such as limiting the force of any impacts between the human and the robot next line robotics technology is also being designed to be worn by workers to reduce the physical stress of demanding tasks and augment worker strength and these are termed exoskeletons and exosuits next slide robots are also being created for specialized industrial applications and operating in a shared space with humans this includes drones used for inspections of structures and equipment use of autonomous machines and agricultural operations and the piloting of driverless commercial trucks on u.s roadways next slide service robots are a type of robot designed specifically to assist humans and they typically operate in a shared space with humans this slide shows the top five selling service robots for professional use with sales in 2019 in green and sales in 2020 in purple the largest sales of service robots were in transportation and logistics personal cleaning medical robotics hospitality and agriculture next slide advances in artificial intelligence will lead to more decision making and autonomy by robots next slide while the technology that's being developed is remarkable and it holds promise for enhancing productivity and safety it is critical that we be proactive and vigilant to ensure that worker safety and health is addressed technologies are developing rapidly and human factors are not always considered in the design and applications additionally workplaces and workers are complex and it is hard to anticipate all contingencies and develop fail-safe equipment and systems the following case study shows how things can go wrong despite very sophisticated equipment and controls next slide this case involved a death in 2015 that was investigated by the niosh supported washington state fatality assessment and control evaluation program this is a picture of the driverless forklift involved in the incident the forklift was used to move pallets of water bottles and automatically navigated around the warehouse using a system of vehicle mounted lasers and reflectors that were positioned throughout the warehouse the forklift had safety sensors designed to detect objects or workers in the vehicle path when a sensor detected an obstacle the forklift would stop moving and an alarm would sound until a worker removed the obstacle the manufacturer's manual requires a worker to initiate an emergency stop before removing an obstacle and the forklift would then need to be manually reset to start again shown on the right are strips of plastic wrap often torn off of pallets during loading and unloading that were known to stick to the forks and to be seen as an obstacle by the forklift investigators believe that the worker attempted to remove a piece of plastic from under the elevated forks without first initiating an emergency stop that he was likely bending or kneeling under the forks outside of the safety sensor field and that when he removed the plastic the forklift reset bringing the elevated forks down crushing him against the wheel cover of the vehicle next slide advances in occupational robotics technology have the potential to improve worker safety but there are also concerns that these new technologies can contribute to worker injuries occupational robots can improve worker safety by expanding the use of robots for dangerous work removing the need for workers to be in harm's way and by augmenting workers abilities however increased interaction between humans and robots has the potential to result in injuries the new types of robots will require refined and new protection strategies there are concerns that rapid advances and technology will outpace standard setting and finally increased use of robotics and concerns about job displacement may contribute to worker stress next slide this slide gives examples of how different technologies hold both potential to reduce hazardous exposures to workers as well as to potentially introduce hazards traditional robots can do work that's hazardous to human workers such as welding however there's also the potential for workers to be injured from unintended contact with the machinery this can occur during maintenance and when safety controls are subverted for the sake of expedience or productivity mobile robots hold promise for reducing hazards to human workers during disaster response however there's also the potential for unintended contact with workers and ignition of explosive atmospheres exoskeletons hold promise for reducing wear and tear on human bodies from heavy lifting awkward postures and repetitive motions but they have the potential to introduce hazards from unintended loading on other parts of the body restriction of motion and impacts on balance drones hold promise for reducing hazards associated with inspections particularly at heights which present fall risks to workers but they have the potential to hurt workers from unintended contact from drone operator error or malfunctions of the drone additionally the use of drones around human workers has the potential to distract them and contribute to injuries from inattention or loss of balance next slide niosh established the center for occupational robotics research in september 2017 in response to the rapid growth and occupational robots and wanting to be proactive in addressing worker safety and health next slide the center was formed to provide scientific leadership to guide the use of occupational robots that enhance worker safety health and well-being next slide the center is a virtual rather than a brick-and-mortar center it provides strategic direction for and coordinates robotics related work across the institute's campuses and divisions researchers have a range of expertise including epidemiology industrial hygiene engineering and organizational psychology and the center is encompassed within the niosha future of work initiative next slide the center uses a broad definition of robotics and encompasses multiple technologies we address both traditional industrial robots such as those that work in robotic cells in cages away from human workers and emerging robotics technologies such as collaborative robots mobile robots wearable robotics powered exoskeletons autonomous vehicles drones and future robots that through artificial intelligence will have increased autonomy next slide this slide shows the various activities the center is engaged in they include monitoring trends and injuries evaluating robotics technologies as sources of and as interventions for workplace injuries and illnesses establishing risk profiles of robotic workplaces identifying research needs and conducting research supporting the development and adoption of consensus standards which serve as best practices and developing and communicating guidance and best practices before moving on to describe our research activities i'd like to touch on next slide our participation in standards committees consensus-based standards serve as best practices we're actively engaged in several standards committees for a couple of purposes one is to bring our expertise and add voice to occupational safety and health discussions and considerations second our participation helps us identify research needs that we might fill to advance the work of these committees we participate on the american national standards institute or ansi committee working to update the industrial robots and robot system safety standard including updates to address advances in collaborative robot safety we participate on the new ansi standard released in late 2020 on mobile robot safety and we participate on the international standards organization robotics committee whose deliberations are often adopted and integrated into the aforementioned ansi standards we are participating on an underdevelopment astm standard for exoskeletons and exo suits and we contributed input on worker safety and health on two documents that are not standards per se but they're related we provided input on the need for worker safety and health on a roadmap for future standards related to drones and we contributed to an ansi american society of safety professionals and national safety council document providing best practices for managing occupational fleets with partially and fully automated vehicles next slide i would now like to share with you occupational robotics research needs that we've identified and an overview of our growing research portfolio next slide niosh interest and robotics related research are included in our strategic plan for fiscal years 2019-2024 the strategic plan is organized by health outcomes and robotics related research is included in sections on traumatic injury prevention musculoskeletal health immune infectious dermal disease and healthy design and well-being within each of these health outcomes priority research is identified by industry sector for example agriculture construction based on consideration of the burden or potential burden on workers such as large numbers of injuries the specific need for the research and the potential of the research to move the needle to better protect workers these goals guide both intramural and external research thus in internal niosh competitions for research funds proposals must address goals in the plan extramural researchers are also encouraged to identify goals addressed by their proposals when submitting investigator-initiated grant applications to niosh next slide the four types of research conducted by niosh are summarized on this slide along with how they relate to occupational robotics research we conduct surveillance research to improve the ability to identify and track injuries and fatalities involving robotics we conduct basic or ideologic research to increase our understanding of human and robot interactions and identify risk factors for injury we conduct intervention research to identify opportunities to better protect worker safety and health using robotics this includes evaluations of robots as interventions and evaluation of risk control strategies to reduce robot related injuries and finally we conduct translation research to evaluate aids and barriers to implementing research findings and best practices next line the goals in the strategic plan are written broadly more detailed research needs can be found on the robotics research webpage and the niosh future work research agenda published late last year next slide as i noted previously the center was established in late 2017 we are in the process of building up our research portfolio research is a time consuming endeavor including time to develop and peer review research protocols and time for review and approval by human subjects research boards and sometimes the office of management and budget as well the pandemic has contributed to delays in research starts and research finalized and findings disseminated we this thus much of our research is in the startup phase or in progress we have a small but growing portfolio of research conducted by our scientists within niosh and researchers in academia this research ranges from small and pilot studies to larger scale studies next slide with respect to extramural research we fund research through several mechanisms we fund seven state programs to investigate some worker related fatalities and a couple of these state programs have identified fatalities involving robotics as priority for investigations the case study that i presented earlier on the driverless forklift was from the washington state based program niosh funds investigator initiated research and niosh supported centers such as education and research centers the national construction center and centers for agricultural safety and health have included robotics related research in their research portfolios after my presentation you will be hearing from dr nuja about research he's done with funding from an erc and the national construction center nash's mining program uses contracts to support priority mining research and for the last few years niosh has partnered with the national science foundation to include occupational robotics research needs in the national robotics initiative funding opportunity announcement next line nair supported research includes projects addressing multiple technologies including traditional robots collaborative robots mobile robots remote controlled robots drones and exoskeletons research projects address applications in several industry sectors including agriculture construction manufacturing mining and healthcare the majority address the prevention of musculoskeletal or traumatic occupational injuries we have one project funded in partnership with the national science foundation that includes the use of robotics to prevent the transmission of infectious diseases to health care workers i've provided the link to the page on our center website that includes an inventory of our research projects next slide so we've discussed that increasing use of new robotics technologies is part of the future of work and that there are numerous knowledge gaps i would now like to discuss what can be done to keep workers safe in the interim as we seek to fill these knowledge gaps next slide first niosh encourages robotics manufacturers and those who integrate robots into work environments to follow prevention through design principles to engineer safety into the robots and work systems we encourage the development of best practices by consensus standards groups and others and we encourage employers and workers to follow these best practices next slide on this slide i show a few examples of recently developed best practices osha recently updated its technical manual chapter on industrial robot systems and industrial robot system safety this chapter was updated through an osha alliance with the association for advancing automation in niosh and it includes up-to-date technical information on the hazards associated with industrial and emergent robot applications it includes safety considerations for employers and workers and risk assessment methods and risk reduction measures this chapter serves to guide osha compliance officers as they perform inspections at facilities with robotic systems and it provides a technical resource for safety and health professionals overseeing the use of robotic systems in workplaces at the bottom of the slide are two best practices developed by researchers who completed small studies funded by the national construction center dr naji will be discussing the protocol for assessing human robot interaction safety risks in his presentation which is coming up the second example is a practical model for measuring and mitigating safety risks of using unmanned aerial systems in construction next slide the niosh web page for the robotic center includes these products as well as additional resources such as niosh science blogs case reports and peer-reviewed articles next slide in summary occupational robots will increasingly be used across industries and have new functions and increased autonomy research and work to develop best practices for working safely with robots are needed to position the occupational safety and health community to proactively address the proliferation of robotics technologies that are a significant component of the work future of work next slide thank you so much for your interest in our work and attention to my presentation i've included my contact info on this slide as well as our center's website address thank you thank you don um another reminder if you have any questions please drop those in the q a we'll be answering those at the end of the session okay uh next up we have dr truma naji hi everyone um first of all i want to thank don for setting up the stage perfectly i'm on the topic of you know using robots in occupational settings i've already been introduced tumor energy an assistant professor in the department of civil construction and environmental engineering at the university of alabama in tuscaloosa i direct the construction innovation integration lab at the university as well so as don already mentioned earlier i'm going to be going through two projects that were sponsored through niosh bygone going through two other entities original regional center for occupational safety and health and also the center that handles construction related safety research the very first project is looking at the role that exoskeletons can play or how they will interact with temperature when being used for construction activities and the second is about the protocol that don also mentioned for assessing human robot interaction when looking at safety risks so um again this presentation i'm gonna go a little bit quick uh but what i'll do my best to cover as much as possible but however feel free to reach out to me via email if you have additional questions about um or if you want resources within the domains that i'm going to be covering over the next 20 minutes or so so first off um the whole idea of rebel robots being used for occupational settings is is not a new idea it's been there for a while but now it's getting into some of the specific domains like construction agriculture and manufacturing so we have a decent number of wearable devices that are commercially available and we also have some that are currently under you know production or development when we talk about exoskeletons or wearable robots or exercise they typically fall into two broad categories they are either gonna be seen as passive or they will be seen as active the active devices are more responsive overall to the human while the passive just consistently provides a level of support using a mechanical system typically made up of um strings actuators and relying on gravity to provide support um articulators can support different body parts most times we it's been used for more upper body support but it does also provide support for you know lower body as well or full body and this table just provides us with the snapshot of the different exoskeletons that are um that are out there in the market right now now you know several folks have said that you know using exoskeletons or robotics in general actually does you know provide benefits overall to construction workers or you know workers in different industries which is which is true but what we don't really know at this point is how these technologies will perform within specific context contexts such as doing work outdoors in hot temperatures which is something that is typical in construction and maybe mining and maybe agriculture as well so this study here is looking at you know how we can assess the performance of exoskeletons given the high incidence rate that we typically have that are tied to um heat related illnesses would exoskeleton help workers perform better would it actually um like um don mentioned would it actually be introducing more of a risk that makes it worse when you are or when it's being used in in higher temperatures so to to test the the our idea or starting hypothesis that actually you know exoskeletons can perform at a high level regardless of the temperature uh we set up an experiment which was for drilling specifically and uh we developed a platform for synchronizing different types of data that are more physiological facing um to help us objectively assess how exoskeletons perform when they when workers are or people are exposed to different temperatures okay so um for this particular pilot study we had four conditions that we tested the first condition was you know relatively speaking room temperature and we also looked at the temperature that was what i would consider a high temperature about 90 degrees fahrenheit and we tried to keep the the lab space at about 50 humidity and we did that for both the conditions where we had people use the exoskeletons for the for the drilling activity and conditions why they did not have to use the exoskeletons we had folks drill continuously into the wrong that we developed for about 15 minutes and we asked them to be as precise as possible and we developed the process of collecting error data as well um through the experimental apparatus the types of data that we collected were around muzzle activation and we used emg to collect the data from muscle activation we captured muscles and two primary muscles the anterior deltoid and the posterior deltoid and we did that on the left side and the right side um of you know right hand and left hand of the wall of the folks who participated in the study so just showing a picture of like the setup you know the anterior deltoid and the posterior deltoid and one of the participants who stopped by the lab to test the particular or to work with a particular exoskeleton and we also assessed the perceived exertion um which folks refer to it as the roe burning scale and again this is just determining or asking participants to tell us how they feel as they go through the experiment also we looked at the comfort level as part of their assessments they were slightly more subjective because they were done using them survey a questionnaire survey we also captured the error rates like i mentioned earlier using uh the the wrong the approaches that we developed and that was looking at how many times the bit struck the the the sides of the the hole that we created in the wrong so looking at some of the results um let's start with the the error rates that we that we captured during the drilling activity and what we saw was that um when when we had them when we had participants exposed to a hotter temperature um they were having more errors compared to when you know they were in room temperature which you would which you would kind of like expect because you're getting tired faster you're getting distracted because the temperature so we saw higher error rates however when we introduced the exoskeleton we saw a slight decrease within which regards the error rates in the hot temperature so it was um the errors increased overall but with the exoskeleton condition we saw a slight you know deep in the error rate so the error rate reduced when folks are working with the exoskeleton in um hot temperature one thing i forgot to mention earlier is that the the forks we use in this study i suppose what was the first phase was a pilot study we focused mainly on you know construction students within our program at alabama and not the construction workers who are out there however the folks who came in typically had experience with with the drilling activities just to be to be clear so when looking at the muscle activation we we we normalize the emg data following you know the filtration processes and so forth i want to bore you with all those details but uh what what we have here in this particular slide and shows us that there wasn't like a significant difference when we checked the results uh for the width and without the exoskeleton condition when we um in room temperature for the anterior deltoid and the posterior deltoid for the left side and for the right side it was pretty it was pretty close okay uh but we could see a slight reduction in muscle activation for the left side posterior deltoid for the right side until deltoid that was not the opposite for the posterior deltoid right side until down to the left side so again but again it wasn't a big change per se so what we could take out from what we could take away from this slide is that um the exo did not necessarily um impact the activation snow significantly uh in room temperature now looking at the the horror condition um we could see that you know for all four models that we captured or groups that we captured that there actually was a drop when we look at the width exoskeleton condition while it's not significant you know the level of a p-value is 0.05 just was
slightly less than that but we could see that you know looking at the figure that there was a better drop compared to the you know room temperature condition now we only have 15 minutes um for the experiment and we can hypothesize that if we had extended the experiment longer you would actually see that the exoskeleton would uh play a bigger role in helping to ensure that the muscle activation is uh doesn't drop significantly now looking at the more the subjective measure that we use which was the the berg um scale we we asked folks tell us you know at the beginning and at the end of the experiment how they feel the rate of procedure exertion and uh in this particular slide you can see that in the heart condition the participant actually felt more exerted with the exoskeleton compared to the without exoskeleton now again this is primarily looking at discomfort uh one of the issues we have with the skeletons is that they are in most cases provide you with limited mobility which could also impact your level of comfort so while this is subjective in terms of how we've got the data it also tells us that while the technology might be great in terms of reducing muscle activation it does have some um negative perception when looking at exertion so again the issue of using the skeleton is not something that is going to be down to does it work in terms of improving productivity we have to look at it from a more holistic picture because there are multiple factors that goes into ensuring that workers use these devices the right way and use them safely as well um the second project i'm going to be going through real quick for the next several minutes is looking at um developing tools that could help us better mitigate uh risks that are introduced or enhanced uh when we have a robot and a human you know working together or working within the same space and to do that we need you know tools we need resources uh in the absence of those resources something could go wrong but when we do have those resources it's easier for us to better manage better plan and hopefully prevent the accidents from occurring because we have good controls in place so again this study focused on hey what are those good controls what are the significant concerns of safety risks for different types of robots and how do we pair the different risk mitigation strategies to the different safety risks and come up with solutions that ensure that workers within the construction domain for specific tasks can end up doing the work working with robots and be safe at the end of the day so that's what we focused on in this study this study was supported by the cpwr so the resources developed through the study are currently online and you folks should have access to them if you want to go through the report so for to to develop the resources we went through a multi-phase process we started by first of all identifying several hazards that can be affiliated with the use of robots in occupational settings and one of the documents that we actually referenced was the older version of the osha's guide that they had out and i think don also referenced that particular resource as well so we looked at that we looked at several documents that were industry-facing and also academic literature to identify the different hazards and also the the strategies that can be used to prevent uh the and also to identify strategies that could be used to prevent issues around human robots interactions uh after that we went forward to identify different experts and we used the delphi process to help us derive the inside and the direct the delphi process is simply some sort of a focus group where you have multiple experts working together um to iteratively drive knowledge that is less uh biased because now you're relied on the collective rather than just um or one round of of surveys but you're doing multiple rounds iterating as you go through with the goal of reducing the bias and coming up with more objective insights so we had 29 experts uh participate in this panel across industry and academia and they helped us develop the different skills we use to assess high and low level of safety risk and also to figure out which risks are going to be critical for different tasks we looked at three tasks in this study we looked at bricklaying we looked at concrete um finishing and we looked at drywall hanging and the game was all within construction and we also looked at three categories of technologies of robots we looked at wearable robots we assessed you know the remote control which is going to be your drones and your unmanned ground vehicles and we looked at the single task robots which would be like your bricklaying robots and so forth so we identified 40 critical ha 40 hazards um that are introduced or enhanced by the use of robotic and automation and construction operations like i said we broke it down to three levels of ras so that's your weapon robot remote operated robot and your single task or on-site automated robotic systems we were able to classify the the hazards into seven groups again were guided primarily by osha's um i'm standing on what they have right now as a resource for you know um preventing accidents related to human robots interaction so we have those seven groups that we also identify potential strategies for mitigating them again all this information is provided in the cpwr report now this table just summarizes some of the high risks that we identified for wearable robots and again for a drywall installation so this is a specific task for the use of wearable robots we went through three tasks in the report it's available uh but in this particular application for drywall installation we can see here that limited mobility which is something that don talked about earlier as well is what was seen as a significant concern um for the experts that participated in this in the study was was written out of the higher um safety risks you also look at discomfort again was was rated as a high risk then you have you know improper equipment tool used by the worker mechanical part failure uh which again ties into one of the issues that don talked about in the case study when the mechanical system doesn't function that's ensued that was a that that was for a single task robot but in this context again it's still a higher risk for when looking at wearable or robots or exoskeletons this slider shows the critical safety risk that we identified for the different tasks that we looked into for drywall installation bricklaying for concrete grinding and polishing we've identified different critical safety risks some of the risks were somewhat consistent like mechanical part failure but others were not because again the different tasks would likely have different risks and would have different levels of those risks as well but the major sources of risk remember we had seven sources but the major sources of risk were that's the mechanical system where tied to the walker of the human things like distraction then you look at the control system for the different robots that we assessed again these were the three main categories they were looking at mitigation strategies we have different types uh we have those that you can implement before you even start the work so more design oriented strategies i know don't mention okay using professional through design strategies to design a robot but we could also use prevention through design strategies to design the workspace to ensure that when you do have robots and workers working together you have limited problems because you you know you thought about it and you created a space that was conducive to such operations and we also have a list of other implementation strategies or strategies that you could implement to help you know reduce the risks associated with the use of robot we created different resources we have a robotic system manual assessment model which provides insight on the key fact the key safety risks the different robots that are out there for construction operations um some of the strategies that could be used to prevent the different safety risks we also created a safety protocol more like a jha that could be used by you know foreman on the job sites if they are interacting with the different types of robots for the for the tasks that we worked on um this this these materials are online they are available and you could use that thanks to you know support from niosh and the the regional center and cpwr and the last resource there is on online two that we also put together uh to help you know folks who have to you know assess the risk levels of using different robots on the on the jobs and something that's easier to use okay so kind of like in summary um as don already mentioned no we have several technologies coming out you know when uh looking at robots exoskeletons and single task robots you know this this technologies are uh are here and we believe they're here to stay but they do have some risks attached to them so we we need to be we need to be prepared for the future we need to have the resources to understand how and when to implement these technologies to uh to guarantee the safety of our workers and also the efficiency of the work process so yeah so that's my presentation for today and some of my references i believe this is going to be online at some point so you folks feel free to to look at this and down here if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me my email is provided and and that's it i'm gonna move i'm gonna pass it on to scott thank you chuma so uh we are right on schedule here and we're gonna enter our q a portion we have about 13 minutes here um so please if you have any questions please drop those in the q a and so the first question uh this will be for don is niosh partnering with academic robotics groups and or sharing the research needs in ensuring worker health and safety and wellness thanks scott so yes we are partnering with academic robotics groups as well as industry partners we could not do what we are doing without the support and leveraging the expertise and resources of others we've got some memorandums of understanding partnership agreements with a few universities such as north carolina state university university of florida university of wisconsin-madison and the the scope of those partnership agreements is to support collaborative research as well as to provide experiential opportunity learning opportunities for students and with respect to sharing the research needs with academic groups yes we have them on our website but we've also presented them at different forms for example the national robotics initiative has an annual meeting of robotics investigators and we've shared information um to that group and then the um the other thing i'll note is that we've also got some examples where our staff provide input to research that's funded either through niosh or through other groups such as the national science foundation thanks doc the next question is for you so you mentioned earlier about active and passive exoskeletons if you could go into a little more detail on the advantages and disadvantages of each of those all right great um so for the next one with the passive exoskeleton so most times it will be cheaper because the the system itself is more straightforward it's reliant on less electronics however it's less responsive to the walker so it's providing you with a fixed level of support so you could see that you could guess that the discomfort level might be a little bit higher okay now you have those systems readily available in the market um if you look at the list i provided in the slides you see that most of them were actually passive exoskeletons and not necessarily active skeletons now when we flip it to the active exoskeletons again there are fewer in the market they are more expensive because they are you know smarter systems overall and uh they would usually help or we would we could argue i've not tested it and that's a as a researcher i have to be careful with what i say but you could argue that it's going to be more effective because it's more responsive to the human than when you just have the active and so when you have just a passive exoskeleton so um so those are i'll consider the major differences in terms of operations and usability thanks juma uh next question we have will be for don uh please comment on the safety risks and risk prevention to workers and to the public for autonomous robotic vehicles drones and humanoid whites for example the teslabot yeah so one of the things i noted is that the technology that's being developed is really really remarkable but we're also talking in situations where we're putting that technology into a shared space with humans and humans are are not always predictable and humans and and different environments are complex so it's really important that we proactively try to identify the risks such as the work that um dr naji had done with with his external experts and for us to be you know really vigilant and recognize that we can't we we have to be concerned about over reliance on the technology we've seen a number of um incidents with the automated you know auto pilots within cars and vehicles and something goes wrong in the programming there's not all the contingencies that have been planned for so there's a tremendous amount of work ahead for us and then i'll just make an additional comment on the humanoid robot so one of the issues with those are that when you make the robot look like a human you run the risk of human workers over interpreting what the capabilities are of that robot whether or not they can perceive like a human can perceive whether or not they can have empathy like a human does and so those are some additional considerations for the the humanoid robots thank you don uh next question for chuma okay in the present study utilize students as the sample population would the outcome change significantly if real construction workers were used um great question so i would say it could change but we do know until we actually test um or do conduct experiments using you know construction workers but one thing i i would also highlight is that most of the folks who were participating in the study were largely speaking healthy young people okay now when you have folks who are older um maybe not as healthy as well what you would see is that the level of activation when we're looking at the muscle activation specifically the level of activation will be different because you know healthier workers have better regulation for their muscles than on people who are not that healthy so the i i could argue again data to prove that that for folks who are in a lesser or the less for folks who are not in the best physical state the exo might be able to even provide better value overall uh but again i'm not saying this conclusively uh i'm saying this i say hypo as a hypothesis that we can test in the future um when we want to evaluating but one of the difficulties we would always have in research is convincing construction workers actually leave the job sites and come to the lab to do the experiment but in the future we we hope that we'll be able to achieve that thanks thanks jimmy uh next question for don uh what role have occupational robots played during the covet 19 pandemic yeah so there are a number of examples of robots being used to address manufacturing challenges that were associated with the pandemic as well as helping to prevent harmful exposures of workers examples include use of robotics to manufacture personal protective equipment and cloth face coverings that was brought on when we were dealing with the supply shortages and then also use of robotics equipment to disinfect workplaces the pandemic sparked a considerable amount of research that may come to bear for future applications and one example is the project that i mentioned that we funded in partnership with the national robotics initiative to develop an intuitive interface to allow nurses to conduct some patient tasks remotely which would help reduce their exposure to the virus so a few examples but it does appear that the pandemic did spawn some additional applications and interest in use of robotics in workplaces thanks tom another question for you don is do you have any tips or resources on how to communicate to concerned or hesitant employees about occupational robots yeah so the introduction of robots to the workplace can be concerning to employees they may not understand the purpose of the robot they may not have concerns about how to work safely with the robot and they may be concerned with the robot replacing them or or co-workers so it's really important to engage employees up front so that they understand what the robotics technology brings to the workplace and the positive impacts for the work that they do which might include removing them from some tedious or dangerous work and freeing them up for more challenging and rewarding tasks it's also important to engage them in pilots so that they can provide their expertise on how best to integrate the technology into their work and that they're part of the process one of the things that dr naji noted is issues with with comfort for the exoskeletons so it's important that you take the perceptions and the experiences of the workers into consideration as you begin to integrate the robotics into the workplace and then finally it's really important to provide employees with training on what the robot does and does not do for example how the robot senses we talked about the humanoid robots or does not sense employee actions and then protocols for working safely with the robot so that the the employees are fully familiar with the risk mitigation measures and why they're so important thanks tom tuma what hazards were rated as the most critical safety risk for each ra and across each construction task and you're on mute sorry about that so when you when we look at the different construction tests um we we could see that uh let me let me let me check this so things around walker mobility was a concern for the for all the tasks when looking at exoskeleton that was for sure um there were also issues around a mechanical part failure and one of the examples that we discussed with the experts was that okay you could put all the device and you start doing work now after a while maybe it could get tighter depending on the type of exoskeleton that you're using then how do you actually deal with that you'd have to stop work which is lost in productivity then you have to try to reorganize the system or you just keep working that way and you and because you don't want to lose productivity but the worker ends up leaving with blisters or something like that so um those were those were concerns that were raised across all the tasks when you're looking at um exoskeletons when looking at the the robots um the single task robots and the and the drones which are remote operated robots uh issues around mechanical failure um a mechanical part failure rose to the very to the very top um also looking at you know inadequate work task designs for the on-site single task robot that was also brought up as well as um as issues that could lead to a significant negative outcome okay thanks so we have time for one maybe two more questions um so the next one don what are some of the common challenges that employers face regarding robots and how can these challenges be overcome yeah so one challenge is simply sifting through the variety of the new robots and identifying those that will enhance your operations to to focusing on what needs to be done and looking at the robot to do that rather than necessarily you know looking at this new exciting technology and trying to figure out how to put it into your workplace and then a second challenge is integrating the technology into the operations and doing so in a fashion that's embraced by employees and in a fashion that's safe pilots including those that actively engage employees on how they are rolled out are a good idea to help work out the kinks and to engage employees and then it is critical that thorough risk assessments be completed to identify potential risks to human workers and that control strategies be put in place these risk assessments need to be considered not just for the equipment but the environment and the system in which the robotics equipment will work and then the consensus-based standards that i had referenced earlier those are are good places to look for you know those risk assessment measures and control strategies and then the final thing i'll note is that there are certified integrators who are thoroughly trained in risk assessments and controls that can be brought into on the workplace to ensure that the integration of the robot is done in a in a safe and holistic fashion thanks tom okay so that's all the time we have for today another warm thanks to don and chuma for their thoughtful presentations to keanu harper for her logistical support and to all our attendees for joining the nia's future of work initiatives webinar on the role of robotics in the future of work again be sure to visit our website to stay abreast of our funeralized future of work initiative activities and forthcoming webinars until we meet again stay safe healthy and well goodbye
2022-07-30 00:40
