Interdependence analysis in collaborative robot applications from a joint cognitive functional perspective

This paper sets up a framework to assess co-agency in human-robot interactions, and applies it specifically to the socio-technical safety analysis of collaborative robots. We also examine to what extent the concept of Situation Awareness can be applied to assess collaborative robots as efficient team members in socio-technical systems. We explain some theoretical concerns with traditional concepts of Situation Awareness and defend why the concept of Joint Cognitive Systems, which maps the conceptualization of the cognitive system onto the work system as a whole, is best suited for issues of distributed cognition and controllability in human-robot interaction. Thereafter we present a five-step methodology specifically conceived for cobot applications serving the aim of goal coordination between multiple agents by functional interactions. The proposed framework merges two existing safety and resilience analysis methods, being the Functional Resonance Analysis Method and Interdependence Analysis. These methods are used in combination to assess shared control in safe and efficient human-robot interaction from a systems-thinking perspective. This allows to describe the systemic conditions for Distributed Situation Awareness in terms of observable system interactions and as an emergent object of distributed cognition. Instead of looking at undesirable safety outcomes, we have imposed the focus of co-agency as the unit of analysis in line with the Joint Cognitive Systems perspective. The theoretical insights from this paper are additionally applied to a hypothetical but credible demonstration case study with collaborative warehouse robots.