Spoke 5 – Smart and sustainable environments (manufacturing, working, living)
The Spoke’s shared goal is the development of innovative, smart, sustainable, digitally-driven working and living environments within a human-centric design framework. The main focus will be smart manufacturing and other innovative industrial working environments.
As we know, new working environments, such as cyberphysical factories, directly affect workers and the nature of work, generating new interactions between humans and machines and between digital and physical worlds. For these reasons, the new, twofold, “cyber-physical” and “human-centric” production systems will be designed having in mind both the capabilities of new and emerging technologies and the needs and desires of human beings and organizations. This also means abandoning the idea of fully automated, unmanned workplaces typical of the industries 4.0 scenario and considering environments and machines as tools for the augmentation of human cognitive, sensorial, and physical potential, a vision that can be more readily adopted by SMEs.
In this direction, by enhancing human high-level cognitive capabilities, like creativity and collaboration, the iNEST technologies will permit us the exploration of new ways to design engaging and safe working environments and enhance people’s experiences with robots, artificial agents, advanced automation, and innovative production systems and materials.
The Spoke’s effort will also be oriented to other living and working environments, like houses, schools and universities, health facilities like hospitals and elderly centres, and public spaces in urban areas or the countryside, to promote quality of life in any place.
