Simone Luca Pizzagalli

The research project focuses on Industry 4.0/5.0 digital production technologies, which enable the development of new products also considering their production readiness to be significantly accelerated. The whole life cycle of the product is under consideration, from the creation of digital product models using 3D scanning, digital twins, and simulation technologies; rapid product prototyping through additive manufacturing technologies to integrate both mechanics and electronics; production based on the principles of lean manufacturing, quality control and product and production monitoring. As a result of the project, a prototyping development and demo centre/ experimental lab will be created in Virumaa College, which enables the development and production of complex and smart mechatronic products.

Customization requirements in modern manufacturing demand a closer collaboration between operators and automated technologies, leading to a novel Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) and interaction (HRI) paradigm aimed at augmenting human capabilities in the workplace. Digital Twin (DT) and Immersive technologies (XR) support the inclusion of the human operator in simulation-based interfaces intended for safe, efficient, multimodal, and adaptive HRI. The design and implementation of these interfaces are not yet adequately addressed. This project aims to define what is the current approach to the requirement definition for DT and XR by analyzing the potentials and challenges of the adoption of DT interfaces and other types of input methods in the HRC context, their allocation in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and the state of current experimental research in this field as bringing the human back to the loop bring us the Industry 5.0 concept within industrial and healthcare domains