Meet Your Robotic Work Colleague - Exploring Human-Robot Collaboration in a Virtual Reality based Research Platform

Aug 22, 2026

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Autonomous robots that collaborate with humans are expected to improve industrial productivity by assisting personnel in tedious, repetitive, and dangerous tasks, motivating Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) as an active research field. Persistent technical and human-factors challenges, including expectation conformity and diverse robot representations, limit today’s industrial deployments. Empirical testing is constrained by safety risks when exposing participants to real or close-proximity robotic setups. This dissertation introduces a VR sandbox to explore HRC configurations safely, supporting adjustable scenarios and machine-learning agents.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages172

Reading Time7 h 13 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Acknowledgments

Research Problem and Motivation

Proposed VR Application

Sandbox for Testing HRC Configurations

VR Features and Implementation Approach

Experimental Studies and Outcomes

Dissertation Meet Your Robotic Work Colleague: Exploring Human-Robot Collaboration in a Virtual Reality based Research Platform Von der Fakult¨at f¨ur Ingenieurwissenschaften, Abteilung Informatik und Angewandte Kognitionswissenschaft der Universit¨at Duisburg-Essen zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Doktor der Ingenieurwissenschaften (Dr.-Ing.) genehmigte kumulative Dissertation von Alexander Arntz aus Oberhausen 1. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Heinz Ulrich Hoppe 2. Gutachterin: Prof. Dr. Sabrina Cornelia Eimler 3. Gutachterin: Prof. Dr. Irene-Angelica Chounta Datum der m¨undlichen Pr¨ufung: 15.06.2022 Acknowledgments I would like to thank those whose support made this dissertation possible. I express my immeasurable gratitude and appreciation to my two supervisors, Prof. Dr. Sabrina C. Eimler and Prof. Dr. H. Ulrich Hoppe. Words can’t describe my gratefulness towards both of you. Thank you Sabrina for your continuous and exemplary support throughout the entire doctoral process. Not only did you provide me with helpful guidance, but you also sparked my enthusiasm for the scientific work we did and motivated me to stay on track. You asked for a lot of dedication, but never more than you were willing to give while always leading by example. The virtues of great leadership. Thank you Ulrich for your immense effort and priceless support during the entire journey. I appreciated the interesting conversations we had that challenged my perspective, gave me new ideas, and helped me to refine my work. I could not imagine better supervision than the one I received from both of you. I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Irene-Angelica Chounta, Prof. Dr. Nicole Kr¨amer, and Prof. Dr. J¨urgen Ziegler. Further gratitude and recognition go to all my current and former colleagues at the University of Applied Sciences Ruhr West that supported mein so many ways. Special thanks go to Dustin Keßler, Dr. Carolin Straßmann, Dr. Elias Kyewski, Stefanie V¨olker, Sebastian Doliwa, Nils Malzahn, Johanna Sch¨awel, Andre Helgert, Veronica Schwarze, Prof. Dr. Uwe Handmann, and the countless unsung heroes that helped with comments, corrections, and suggestions throughout each step of this dissertation. I would like to praise my entire family for their patience, support, and encouragement since the beginning of this dissertation. To my friends, I would like to say, that without their ongoing distractions this work would have been finished far earlier. Anyway, the time spent was worth it. No success in the world is worth it unless I can share it with my dearest wife Zahide. I can’t thank you enough for the support, motivation, and love you have given me. Abstract Autonomous robots, capable of collaborating with humans could benefit industrial production by supporting personnel in domains with tedious, repetitive, and dangerous tasks. To make this vision reality, Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) has established itself as a research field. HRC researchers identified multiple challenges regarding the technical implementation such as enabling the robot to act autonomously, as well as human factors aspects, e.g. , expectation conformity. These challenges prevent current realizations of industrial processes involving the collaboration between humans and robots to reach their full potential. Due to the variety of robot representations and shared task requirements, extensive research is needed to develop solutions to overcome these challenges. However, confronting these challenges in empirical studies is restricted due to safety concerns as exposing participants to prototypical implementations of robot collaboration setups either in full contact or close proximity can provoke hazardous situations. To address this problem, this research presented here proposes a virtual reality (VR) application, where new concepts for HRC configurations can be explored and tested without causing harm to participants. Due to the nature of VR, the

FAQs

Why is Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) considered important?

HRC can improve industrial production by supporting people in tedious, repetitive, and dangerous tasks. It addresses the goal of enabling safe and effective collaboration between humans and robots.

What safety limitation affects existing HRC empirical studies?

Empirical studies are restricted because exposing participants to prototypical robot collaboration setups in full contact or close proximity can create hazardous situations.

How does the proposed VR platform help address HRC research challenges?

The VR application allows new HRC configurations to be explored and tested without harming participants, enabling adjustable scenarios and support for autonomous-robot representations with machine-learning agents for shared tasks.

Aug 22, 2026

Upload by Finn