Following the successful organization of four (4) previous workshops on “Designing Assistive Environments for Manufacturing” (DAEM) at PETRA 2017–2020, which created valuable academic discussions, we wish to consolidate the exchange and foster the community in this domain. Therefore, we propose a fifth DAEM workshop to be held at PETRA 2022. First experiences of new technologies, such as Augmented Reality or in-situ projection in the manufacturing domain, have been presented at our first workshop in 2017 and the evaluations show the potential that new technologies bring into the domain. The following workshops in 2018, 2019, and 2020 focused on questions about how these systems affect work in the short and long run. Further, the papers showed the implications of assistive technologies in manufacturing environments. Still, lots of questions are open and new questions arise in the meantime. In our fifth workshop, DAEM 5, we intend to focus on how to improve job satisfaction with new trends in assistive technologies. This includes topics such as enhancing occupational health management as well as integrating voice-user interfaces or meaningful applications of artificial intelligence into the manufacturing workplace.
By proposing this workshop, we are eager to continue the discussion with researchers and professionals from the HCI community. We will take into account the current state of the art in order to provide incentives for collaboration and to formulate research questions related to the design of assistive environments for manufacturing.
The fundamental change that is happening in manufacturing transforms the practice of running independent manufacturing units to the implementation of novel and networked cyber-physical systems. The digitalization of industrial production, often referred to as “Industrie 4.0” (GER), “Industrial Internet of Things” (US), or “Industrie du Futur” (FRA), lays the groundwork for more flexible and efficient ways of producing goods. This new approach is often highly complex, putting strains on the operators and supervisors of such systems. Hence, new research questions related to the assistance of humans in the industrial context arise. In the last four years, we organized workshops on “Designing Assistive Environments for Manufacturing” (DAEM) at PETRA 2017, PETRA 2018, PETRA 2019, and PETRA 2020. The first half-day workshop in 2017 with five accepted papers created a first valuable academic exchange and established a cross-organizational community. With twelve accepted papers, the workshop was extended to a full-day workshop in 2018. The second workshop fostered the community that is in regular contact and actively driving the research topic in the form of joint research work, publications, and projects. In 2019, the workshop accepted eleven papers and contributed an additional invited talk held by Prof. Oliver Korn. In 2020, we accepted three papers that consolidated how artificial intelligence and developments in augmented reality lead to an improvement in assembly performance. Due to the pandemic, we had to skip the workshop in 2021. Building on these successful workshops in the years 2017–2020, we seek again to assemble researchers and practitioners from HCI in order to continue pushing the research agenda related to the design of assistive environments for manufacturing and to discuss the latest research results. The workshop will intensify existing collaborations, help to establish new ones, and provide a platform for exchanging ideas relevant to the domain. Of course, we welcome both recurring and new participants for this workshop.
For PETRA 2022, we envision a full-day workshop. The workshop will be organized in the following way: First, we will begin with a short opening presentation with background on our workshop, followed by a short kick-off activity, where participants get to know each other. Second, we will take account of the state of the art by having workshop participants present their submitted papers to the group and a succeeding discussion for each of the presentations. All papers will be classified according to their topic and presented within about three sessions. Finally, we will conclude the workshop with a wrap-up session in the later afternoon. All participants will be encouraged to have a joint dinner in the evening to continue vivid discussions in a more informal setting. We plan to publish the workshop papers along with the PETRA 2022 proceedings in order to make them accessible to everyone interested in the design of assistive environments for manufacturing.
Sebastian Büttner
Sebastian Büttner studied Business Administration with Computer Science at Darmstadt University of Technology (Germany),
with stays at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Mobile Life VINN Centre in Stockholm (Sweden) and at Tongji
University in Shanghai (China). He finished his studies in 2010 and worked in industry and academia for several years.
Since 2015, he has been a research assistant at the HCI Lab at OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Lemgo,
Germany. In addition, Sebastian joined the group “Human-Centered Information Systems” at Clausthal University of
Technology (Germany) in 2018 as a PhD student. His research interest lies in the application of Augmented Reality
technologies – more specifically, in-situ projections – in an industrial context.
Mario Aehnelt
Mario Aehnelt studied computer science and psychology at the University of Rostock. Since 2002 he is a member of the
scientific staff at Fraunhofer IGD. There his research is focused on the seamless interlinking of knowledge, learning
and work processes at the workplace. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Rostock. His main
research topic is the design of assistance technologies for the manufacturing workplace based on visual computing and
cognitive automation. Mario organizes and moderates annual scientific and industrial workshops, e.g. the ACM
International Workshop on Sensor-based Activity Recognition and Interaction (http://iwoar.org) or the Go-Visual science
meets business workshop in Berlin (http://igd-r.de/govisual).
Mario Heinz
Mario Heinz is currently working as a research assistant at the HCI
Lab at OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Lemgo, Germany. He holds a bachelor degree in computer science and
a master degree in cognitive and movement science from Bielefeld university. His research is focused on interaction
devices and feedback technologies for assistive systems in industrial contexts.
Thomas Kosch
Thomas Kosch studied Software Engineering at the University of Stuttgart in Germany with a focus on signal processing
algorithm design, analysis of physiological sensory data, and implementation of context-aware computing systems. He was
a PhD student at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich under the supervision of Albrecht Schmidt and is currently a
postdoctoral researcher in the Telecooperation Lab at the Technical University of Darmstadt. His research primarily
encompasses the analysis and interpretation of physiological sensory data to explore its use in adaptive computer
environments, influence on self-awareness through understandable visualizations, and the creation of new methods to
objectively quantify cognitive states. He is generally interested in physiological sensing in combination with recent
advancements in artificial intelligence to understand the individual’s cognition during interaction. His research was
successfully evaluated in practical real-world environments with several industrial research partners.