Improving Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in Human-System Interaction (HSI) Through Applications in Virtual Environments

Abstract

Interactions between humans and system components of future work systems may be driven by digitalization, connectivity and agility. Though the design of future systems is not yet known or is not yet available or accessible, it would be desirable to ensure occupational safety and health (OSH) in early stages of development and design. It would also be helpful to learn about potential hazards and risks and prevent them before using work systems across their future life cycle. Since knowledge, experience and imagination might not be sufficient to predict human-system interactions (HSI) it should be possible to apply modeling and simulation such as virtual reality (VR) to overcome some of the challenges in analysis, design and evaluation of future work systems. Similar seems to be true for work systems too dangerous, too complex, or too resource demanding to investigate in reality. The concept on safety and usability through applications in virtual environments (SUTAVE) facilitates effective prevention through design in OSH to be addressed by means of innovative technology. Studies have been conducted to improve OSH in HSI supported by VR simulation; i.e. (a) risk assessments in planning stage, (b) task, interaction and information design in human robot interaction, (c) usability evaluation of safety measures in contexts of use, (d) near misses and course of events in accident investigations, (e) safety concept development. The results are encouraging to face future challenges in HSI as long as its design is taken into account early on and according to human factors and ergonomics principles.