In robotics, the so-called collaborative robots have seen significant development in the last few years. These robots use sensors to detect collisions with the operator or the environment. As the name suggests, robots are suitable for applications where they can work with the operator and thus contribute to higher speed and better work efficiency. However, to introduce such applications into the industry, it is necessary to ensure sufficient safety of the collaborative application. A lot of research has been done to ensure physical safety. ISO standards provide safety guidelines based on which we can make collaborative robots and collaborative applications inherently safe. However, ensuring physical safety alone is not enough for a carefree and comfortable interaction between humans and robots. It is also necessary to ask ourselves whether the worker feels safe when working together with the robot. The primary purpose of the master's thesis was to determine how different speeds and objects manipulated by a collaborative robot affect the worker's wellbeing while performing a collaborative application. Therefore, for this master's thesis, we developed a collaborative application that mimicked an industrial workplace.
While manipulating various objects at different robot movement speeds, we observed the participant's wellbeing based on four self-report experiential measures: perceived pleasure, arousal, safety, and intention to collaborate with the robot. We then statistically processed the data using ANOVA and looked for how the speed and objects manipulated by the robot affect the participant's wellbeing. We were also interested in whether the interaction of these two independent variables impacted the participant's wellbeing. The results of this master's thesis showed that our application elicited high levels of pleasure, low levels of arousal, high levels of perceived safety, and high intention to collaborate with the robot by the participants. The participants positively perceived the robot, and they generally felt safe while collaborating with the robot. Of the two independent variables, the variable speed had the most significant impact on all participants' experiences. The fast movement of the robot thus resulted in lower levels of pleasure and perceived safety as well as a higher level of arousal. In general, the experimental results showed that positively motivated participants quickly adapted to working with the robot, started to feel comfortable and generally perceived the collaboration and the robot itself as safe and pleasurable.
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