The Context - Artificial Human Sensors: Science and Applications - page 31

growth and economic development, which also benefited of ordinary people. The
human contribution was natural, as part of the industrial development and human
skills were in many cases the reason for success in producing advanced products.
The industrial performance in product and production advances was basically de-
pendent on the workers skill and ability to use their perceptual power, the mea-
sures and values of the human senses. The skilled craftsmen were dependent on
the human perception system to estimate the magnitude of qualitative character-
istic, make probability judgement and use the flavour for fine-tuning a process. It
should be mentioned that the industrial era in relation to the human senses was
also an era of decadence due to the fact that people often worked in mainly un-
healthy and contaminated environments, which often contributed to the degener-
ation of the capacity of the sensing capabilities.
Today, the industry is in an active process stage of development, where
the industrial operations can make advanced operations without humans being
involved. Commercial flights, trains and cars can be operated without humans in
control, Urmson et al . (2006), Benjamin (2006), even if operational restrictions may
prevent the use, Dalamagkidis (2008). Car bodies today are assembled in robot
stations where teams of robots do their part in moving, positioning, gluing, weld-
ing and quality measuring in manufacturing. The manufacturing process requires
few people in the production line to take care of the robots, i.e., to ensure that the
robots complete their jobs within the expected precision and time.
The progress has in many cases moved further, that human skill is not needed
in many advanced or unhealthy activities, where only some years ago, it was not
possible without a human operator. In fact, the technology has in some cases been
so safe, that humans now are the weakest link, Li (2002). Researchers estimate
that approximately 80 % of all accidents are related to the human factor [Kirwan
(1994)], and by studying the causes of near-accidents in industry, the ability for
prevention has indeed increased, often by actively high-lighting the human in-
fluence in the process. Research activities in the area of increasing the interaction
between individuals, computer systems and available resources of information are
abundant and where it is applicable, aim to increase the symbiotic effects of the hu-
man involvement in advanced artificial systems. The goal is not to reduce human
involvement in the process, but rather reduce the risk that human involvement in-
troduces as an extra source of error in a symbiotic system. Also the use of robotic
systems in contaminated working conditions provides us with an alternative not
to use human perception abilities in dangerous situations.
In future, industrial work will most likely need to replace the human percep-
tual abilities and derive advantage from artificial systems that independently or
in cooperation with human operators, e.g., in controlling a process or in building
construction. The trend is however, that fewer people get more work done, by
interacting with complex technical systems that will provide the main sensory in-
formation, dynamical information or logistic skills. The operator's main task will
then in these situations be, restricted to control the artificial process operation, as
in the example of the car body production described earlier.