Human-centered robotics for healthcare: Perspectives of cognitive ergonomics and neuroergonomics

Barresi, Giacinto

Abstract

The pervasive integration of human-centred robotic systems in healthcare encompasses applications like assistance, prosthetics, rehabilitation, and surgery. However, the introduction of smart mechatronic devices in biomedical contexts faces significant challenges, particularly in achieving human-centred design properties that effectively align with goals, needs, and skills of the users—clinicians, patients, and potentially anyone. Consequently, exploring the opportunities offered by healthcare robots requires the adoption of human factors perspectives, especially the ones of cognitive ergonomics and neuroergonomics. These disciplines are based on the investigation of the interactions between humans and other elements of a system according to, respectively, mental and neural processes to design and assess (and re-design) the system itself. Overall, through cognitive ergonomics and neuroergonomics we can obtain intuitive and efficient interactions, improving user experience and system performance. This contribution will describe examples of human-centred robotic systems in biomedical scenarios in terms of the opportunities offered by cognitive ergonomics and neuroergonomics. In particular, this chapter will explore the potential of robotic-digital synergies for exploiting the versatility of computer-generated items (across virtual and augmented settings) to facilitate and enhance human-robot interactions in healthcare training applications according to principles of cognitive ergonomics and neuroergonomics.

• Online Publication Date: May 21, 2025
• Publication Date: May 21, 2025
• Deposit Date: May 27, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: May 22, 2026
• Publisher: Springer (part of Springer Nature)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Book Title: Healthcare in the Digital Age
• ISBN: 9789819614363; 9789819614370
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-1437-0_3
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/14468828