What is it about?
When we think about robots in the workplace, the conversation often starts and ends with safety: will the robot hurt anyone? But working alongside a robot involves so much more than that. This study reviewed 66 published papers on how people experience working with collaborative robots, known as cobots, to understand what really shapes those experiences. We found that physical comfort, mental strain, stress, trust, and even the robot's appearance and communication all play a role. Yet most existing research only scratches the surface, relying on lab experiments rather than studying real workplaces, and measuring narrow technical outcomes rather than listening to the people doing the work. As robots become more common across industries, from manufacturing to healthcare to construction, we need research that captures the full picture of human experience. This paper outlines a framework of human factors that future researchers and designers can use to build robot systems that truly work for the people who use them.
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Why is it important?
What makes this work timely is that cobots are no longer a future prospect; they are already on factory floors, in operating theatres, and on construction sites. Yet the research guiding their design has not kept pace with that reality. By systematically mapping the human factors that matter most, and presenting them as a practical framework, this paper gives researchers, designers, and industry practitioners a shared language and starting point for putting people at the centre of robot design. At a moment when Industry 5.0 is explicitly calling for human-centred approaches to technology, this review helps translate that ambition into something actionable.
Perspectives
This paper holds a special place for me because it was where my doctoral journey truly began. Before stepping into an operating theatre or conducting a single interview, I needed to understand the landscape: what did we already know about how people experience working with robots, and where were the gaps? This review was that foundation, and what it revealed both surprised and motivated me. The finding that stuck with me most was just how technically dominated the field was. Study after study measured physical posture or task efficiency, while the richer, messier, more human dimensions of the experience, how people feel, how they adapt, how they build or lose trust, were largely absent. That gap felt important, and it shaped everything that came after in my research. I also think there is something honest about a literature review that concludes we do not yet know enough. It resists the temptation to overstate what the field has achieved and instead points clearly toward what still needs to be done. I hope this paper serves as a useful map for other researchers who, like me, believe that understanding people is just as important as engineering better robots.
Jasper Vermeulen
Queensland University of Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: To Safety and Beyond! A Scoping Review of Human Factors Enriching the Design of Human-Robot Collaboration, Interaction Design and Architecture(s), June 2024, Association for Smart Learning Ecosystems and Regional Development,
DOI: 10.55612/s-5002-061-001.
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