ARAIG - Accompanying research project

Led by HFC, ARAIG was a consortium consisting of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health BAuA and the Competence Centre ELSI of the Technical University of Berlin. ARAIG was the associated research project for the call "Autonomous robots for assistance functions: Interactive basic skills" of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF. Through activities such as workshops, expert conferences and networking, the efforts of the projects funded by the BMBF in the call were aligned and a cross-project transfer of knowledge was made possible.

In addition to collaborative activities, each ARAIG project partner also worked on its own research topics. Our part as HFC was to investigate a model for describing the quality of robots both from a technical point of view and from the point of view of user acceptance. In addition, we researched the influence of robot morphology on user expectation and behaviour. Initial results were discussed in September 2018 with the scientific community, manufacturers and users during the BAuA workshop series "Human-Robot Cooperation - Designing Safe, Healthy and Competitive Work" (link to BauA). In the further course of the project, we also developed a heuristic classification of human-robot interactions (HRI) and conducted a study on the suitability of virtual realities for HRI research.