Usability Evaluation Framework for Close-Proximity Collaboration With Large Industrial Manipulators

Our goal is to design a framework for holistic evaluation of human-robot collaboration systems. To this end we utilize several standardized questionnaires administered while participants perform collaborative tasks in robot work cells. We used Standard Usability Scale and the Usability metric for user experience questionnaires to access usability, NASA Task-Load for workload, two questionnaires for human-robot trust as well as the Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology questionnaires. We performed two pilot tests of our framework with human-robot collabotation work cells at two test sites as part of the DrapeBot project. The goal of the project is to enable human-robot collaboration in the process of carbon fiber draping the production of outer parts. After utilizing the evaluation framework at the two test sites we found that the collection of questionnaires were easy to adapt to each work cell and the practical limitation around running the experiments. Both work cells scored high in usability, expected increase of productivity, as well as high trust and low anxiety, but both work cells scored low on expectancy of use for work in the future at their current state of development.