Supporting Resilient Operator 5.0: An Augmented Softbot Approach

Abstract

Industry 4.0 and 5.0 have been posing new challenges to industries. From a focus on supporting resilience at a corporate level, there is a need to do it at a more operational level, enabling people to act with resilience as well. The resilient operator 5.0 is a new concept emerged from this need. It has the aim of providing more intuitive, symbiotic, human-centered, and cognitive working computing environments to enhance human adaptation capabilities, productivity, and mental health. In this direction, this paper presents an approach that combines softbots and augmented reality, called ‘augmented softbot’. Looking at a specific company, a software prototype has been implemented to evaluate how this approach can be useful and feasible for preventive maintenance. Three scenarios have been devised for that, and they are summarized in the paper. The achieved results are discussed, showing the high potential of the approach.