Achieving Meaningful Collaboration: Worker-centered Design of a Physical Human-Robot Collaborative Blending Task

The use of robots in industrial settings continues to grow, driven by the need to address complex societal challenges such as labor shortages, aging populations, and ever-increasing production demands. In this abstract, we advocate for (and demonstrate) a transdisciplinary approach when considering robotics in the workplace. Transdisciplinarity emphasizes the integration of academic research with pragmatic expertise and embodied experiential knowledge, that prioritize values such as worker wellbeing and job attractiveness. In the following, we describe an ongoing multi-pronged effort to explore the potential of collaborative robots in the context of airplane engine repair and maintenance operations.