Cranfield University

Getting to Grips with How People React to Robots

Robot co-workers are becoming more common in many sectors. In this demo, we’ll show how humans and robots can work together on manual tasks like drilling or moving heavy objects. Our volunteers aren’t very familiar with robotics, so we’ll be monitoring their heart rate, eye-movements and skin conductivity as they work. You’ll get to see how their vital signs change as they interact with the robotic assistant, and afterwards we’ll hear how they felt during the demonstration and what they would like to change before co-working with this type of robot in the future.

Meet the Team

We are a group of Engineers, Computer Scientists and Human Factors Experts coming together to understand how people and robots can interact and work together more effectively and safely and in way that is accepted by people. We specialise in industrial applications working to deploy robots and people in real life applications and at large scale. Our lab contains a wide range of industrial robots both large and small. We also have two real airliner wings that we can use to simulate complex manufacturing environments and we work closely with leading companies such as Airbus on the next generation workplace.