Human-centric manufacturing: putting the human back at the centre of the factory

Before the AMRC, Dave spent around 20 years in industry, mostly in R&D on steelworks and in heavy industry, developing the instrumentation and control systems that drove very large, complex machinery. He joined the AMRC around 2016, becoming Tim’s boss in digital design, and was made head of digital design in 2022.

The team began as electronics plus software and grew to cover control systems, machine design, medical devices and VR/AR. It’s still a small team covering a very wide range of skills.

How would he describe his work to his neighbour? ‘It’s a very diverse working week – in a normal week I can be working with my team on devices that help people with dementia and working on robots that might work in hazardous environments.’ He adds that working on medical applications is a rewarding part of his work, because it can improve people’s lives.

‘Working in industry and understanding how you implement sensing systems, how you can develop precision control systems – they are all fundamental elements of robotics,’ says Dave. ‘But the research element is that it allows me to do things which I wouldn’t have thought I would have done in industry.

‘One of the things I’m quite interested in is remote embodiment – for example, projecting your skills into hazardous environments. That’s a very multidisciplinary problem. It’s an engineering problem, but it also involves neuroscience and it involves psychology, and that’s not something I would have had the chance to get involved with in industry.’

A big project for Dave’s team is MediTel, which brings telexistence to the medical sphere. ‘It looks at how we could develop a robotic platform that would allow people to be present in a remote environment,’ he says. ‘You start to have the sensation of being present in that remote location and project your skills into that location.’

For example, an expert in a particular aspect of the nuclear industry could send a robot into a highly hazardous nuclear environment to provide the hands, sight and sound for that person. ‘We developed a prototype very quickly, in around nine or ten months, trying to get as close as possible to the sensation of being present in a remote location.’

MediTel – Dave’s team’s robotic telexistence platform.

The next challenge is touch. Dexterous robotics has moved on rapidly in the last 12 months, and while camera technology is well established, haptic and tactile technology is still being developed – and it’s fundamental to telexistence. An experienced engineer walking around a steelworks is constantly taking in sensory information: what something should sound like, what a vibration should feel like. Giving people that remotely is incredibly challenging.

Finishing the next phase of MediTel is the project Dave is most looking forward to in the new year. ‘We’re going into trials and user testing. We’ll be getting a state of the art system into the hands of users and find out how close we are to remote embodiment.’

The hardest part isn’t always inventing the clever thing – it’s making it manufacturable.

Some AMRC projects are about proving the feasibility of a piece of research and raising its technology readiness level, rather than heading straight into manufacture. But a lot of the work starts with someone who wants help developing their concept into a product, and then the questions start on day one.

‘You’re starting pretty much from day one with, “So how many of these would be manufactured?” and “What’s the cost that you’re expecting this to be sold at?” They are the elements that drive the design of the product. You’ve got to make something which can be manufactured – we talk about “design for manufacture” – and that is where you are taking in all these various considerations about the requirements, but also considering questions like: how much will it cost to develop? Where is it going to be manufactured? How is it going to be manufactured?’

Design for manufacture – the questions that start on day one.

For Dave, the end user must also be kept front of mind. Who is going to use it, and where? Understanding their needs, their challenges and the context the product will be used in should drive the design process if you want to put it into manufacture and ultimately sell it.

‘It’s an iterative process. You don’t get this right the first time – you constantly revisit the requirements, you learn a little bit more about the application and the challenges, and you revisit the requirements again.’

Back to John Smith in the factory. Dave sees AI as a force for good – as long as it’s treated as a tool. ‘It’s a very powerful tool, but see it as a tool. It will change every aspect of what we do at work and at home, and I’m interested in understanding how it could improve people’s lives.

‘We hear on the news about the threat of AI to jobs and people’s way of lives, but it’s about enabling people to utilise their skills and knowledge more so that they can be more creative. AI is not replacing people. This is about AI supporting people.’

Dave on AI as a tool – supporting people, not replacing them.

With a skills shortage and an ageing workforce, he suggests AI could help people stay productive for longer, and that technology better adapted to people could open manufacturing up to a larger workforce.

For engineers, that means keeping pace. ‘A career in engineering and manufacturing is a lifelong learning requirement,’ says Dave. ‘Technology changes so quickly and the pace of change is increasing all the time. But if you have that passion and drive to learn new skills and adopt new technologies, the next few decades will be incredible.’