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
Smart Industry Centre (SmartIC) was created at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) and Estonian University of Life Sciences (Institute of Technology) in 2017 to improve collaboration in research and development and use of distributed infrastructure in the field of Industry 4.0 - robotics, mechatronics, additive manufacturing, product quality control and related fields of IT (especially artificial intelligence). In 2018, Institute of Technology of University of Tartu joined in collaboration (mainly in the field of robotics). In 2017-2020 several new labs were opened (FMS and Robotics Lab, Industrial Virtual and Augmented Reality Lab, Additive Manufacturing Lab/ ProtoLab, Computer Tomography Lab for quality control, etc). Several new ERF and H2020 funded projects were initiated and launched in 2017-2020.