Special Issue "Robotic Co-Workers for Work and Workforce Sustainability"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Sarah Fletcher
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Industrial Psychology and Human Factors, Centre for Structures, Assembly and Intelligent Automation, Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UK
Interests: human-systems interaction; human-robot collaboration; industrial psychology; robot ethics and standards
Dr. Gilbert Tang
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for Structures, Assembly and Intelligent Automation, Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UK
Interests: human-robot collaboration; robotic system integration; human-robot interface; multimodal Interaction

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Ongoing advances in the capabilities, safety and accessibility of digital technologies and automation mean we are currently on the cusp of a seismic transformation of work places and processes. It is inevitable that robots will be increasingly deployed across occupational sectors to fulfil tasks that they can perform better than people, or are unhealthy for people to do. However, contrary to fears that are often reported in the media, robots will not directly replace workers because internal processes will continue to rely on human physical and cognitive skills. What it means is that work will be shared in human-robot team collaborations rather than by traditional human-human work arrangements. By distributing tasks according to robot / human capability, these new working relationships will enable people of varying skills and experience to continue working, thereby enhancing workforce inclusivity and sustainability. Moreover, in this era of the Covid-19 pandemic, human-robot collaboration will also sustain operations and productivity by facilitating human social distancing.

This Special Issue aims to gather a cross-disciplinary selection of high-quality research papers on the application of robotics to sustain human work and workforces with topics that may include, but are not restricted to:

  • Case studies in occupational sectors
  • Cross-sectoral human-system design principles 
  • Organizational structures, culture and change
  • Methods and models for human-robot analysis
  • Understanding relationships in dyadic and multi-agent teams
  • Physical and cognitive response modelling
  • Visualization and simulation
  • Sociotechnical and Sociomaterial perspectives

Dr. Sarah Fletcher
Dr. Gilbert Tang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • human-robot interaction
  • human-robot collaboration
  • workforce sustainability
  • productivity
  • technology adoption
  • user acceptance

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

Article
Sustainability of Project-Based Learning by Incorporating Transdisciplinary Design in Fabrication of Hydraulic Robot Arm
Sustainability 2021, 13(14), 7949; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147949 - 16 Jul 2021
Viewed by 345
Abstract
Wider acceptance of project-based learning (PjBL) in the tertiary education industry has been obstructed by its resource-intensive nature. This paper introduces a transdisciplinary variant of PjBL for undergraduate engineering students through a multidisciplinary complex engineering problem requiring the design and fabrication of a [...] Read more.
Wider acceptance of project-based learning (PjBL) in the tertiary education industry has been obstructed by its resource-intensive nature. This paper introduces a transdisciplinary variant of PjBL for undergraduate engineering students through a multidisciplinary complex engineering problem requiring the design and fabrication of a hydraulic robot arm. The robotics-inspired transdisciplinary PjBL variant was first evaluated through student feedback using the Chi-square hypothesis test, which, at Chi-square (4, N = 101) = 129.12; p < 0.05, revealed a statistically significant difference in the proportion of the student feedback in favor of the PjBL for sustainability of transdisciplinary project-based learning. Furthermore, the students’ PjBL and PbBL scores were subjected to the Mann–Whitney U test which concluded the effectiveness of PjBL against PbBL with statistical significance, U(N = 101) = 192.00, z = −11.826, p < 0.05. The results indicate that the novel transdisciplinary project-based learning (PjBL) approach develops students’ practical engineering knowledge spanning multiple disciplines, thereby resulting in a sustainable concept of project-based learning. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Robotic Co-Workers for Work and Workforce Sustainability)
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