Virtual participation: Zoom details available here
Speakers: Dr Maria Chiara Leva & Dr Ammar Abbas, Technological University Dublin
Title: "Human in the loop for Collaborative intelligence in safety critical systems: learning from living labs"
Abstract: “ Organizations that use machines merely to displace workers through automation will miss the full potential of AI…Tomorrow’s leader will instead be those that embrace collaborative intelligence, transforming their operations, their industries and –no less important-their workforces.” H.J. Wilson and P.R. Daugherty (Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI Harvard Business Review Press, 2018)
The need for human in the loop automation is particularly relevant for safety critical industry where industrial accidents related to technological malfunctioning have been diminishing leaving the human error responsible for up to 80% of the accidents (Stanton et al., 2009). However, even if one of the main aims of introducing automation is often to improve safety by reducing or eliminating human errors; it is often argued that this may simply induce new types of errors.
To take full advantage of human machine collaboration, companies must understand how humans can most effectively augment machines, how machines can enhance what humans do best, and how to redesign business processes to support the partnership.
The opportunity is that the proliferation of wearable sensors that can track human factors in a non-intrusive manner coupled with the abilities of modern AI systems to integrate heterogeneous data to identify anomalies and safety critical situation can now transform the role of the human in the loop for safety critical systems also.
To address this changing and exciting landscape there is a need to consider the followings multidisciplinary aspects:
1. Capability to understand our own limitation as human being and cope/use them as another element of live data for Industry 4.0 (to understand what aspect of human performance can be assessed and monitored considering the new capabilities offered by Neuroergonomics tool such as EEG and Eye tracking and what can be considered a legitimate and ethical aspect to assess. Whether for mutual performance monitoring in a teaming environment or for also self-monitoring and feedback.)
2. Capability to harness and analyse live data from for industry 4.0 for control of safety critical process to train new AI algorithms to anticipate safety critical scenarios.
3. Capability to create novel hybrid collaborative intelligence frameworks to combine the two main key live data sources to support decision and or anticipate critical scenarios in Human-machine Performance optimizations, whereby the human and the intelligent and or autonomous agents can really work as a team.
In this talk we will just briefly present some areas of application and the key challenges and opportunities they raise in terms of function allocation, dependability and overall system performance. In this sense a collaborative intelligent creative gesture is an innovation that required a combined effort from an intelligent, robotic or autonomous agent and a human. The interim results form the Project CISC and ROBOMATE will be discussed.
Biographies:
- Maria Chiara Leva is the Lead of the Human factors in Safety and Sustainability (HFISS) research group in Technological University Dublin and a Senior Lecturer in the School of Environmental Health for the same institution. She is a visiting research Fellow in the Centre for Innovative Human systems in Trinity College Dublin. She is the co-founder of Tosca Solutions (www.toscasolutions.com) a Spin out campus company based in NDRC and Trinity College Dublin to offer support for implementing risk management tools customised specifically to the needs of highly regulated environments. Her area of Expertise is Human factors and Safety Management Systems. Chiara holds a PhD in Human factors conferred by the Polytechnic of Milano Department of Industrial Engineering. She is the former chair of The Irish Ergonomics Society and current co-chair of the technical committee for Human factors in the European Safety and Reliability Association.
- Ammar Abbas: Erasmus and MSCA scholar with a Master's in Mechatronics and a Ph.D. in Deep Reinforcement Learning. His objective is to improve the deficiencies of society with technology. He has a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and his research interest starting from mechatronic systems and structures converges to robotics and artificial intelligence.