We are a team of social scientists who provide the robust human analysis needed to ensure that any technology or process is successfully designed, integrated and operated. Our expertise in human-system interactions crosses all domains but we are particularly focused on robotics, automation and AI.

Psychology and Human Factors are increasingly critical to industrial performance as people are ever more required to engage with robotics, automation, and digitisation in their daily lives and work. Organisations know that human-centred design is important to efficiency and well-being – but often do not know how to identify when, how or why to integrate it.

The Industrial Psychology and Human Factors Group offers significant experience and proven expertise in applying scientific research to detect, understand and address human-system interaction issues in industry and organisations.

We specialise in a wide range of approaches and techniques to deliver high quality research, guidance and effective bespoke solutions. We typically work directly with clients and users to establish their individual needs, constraints and sensitivities, to promote their engagement and acceptance, and to ultimately develop the most appropriate interventions.

Our areas of research include:

  • Human-robot interaction – we identify and examine specific psychological and behavioural factors that influence collaborative and close-proximity working conditions and performance.
  • Human-systems integration – we evaluate the effectiveness of mixing people and technology by measuring how system elements increase or decrease operator performance and welfare, for example via mental workload, awareness, satisfaction, etc.
  • Tacit skills capture – we extract precise and in-depth cognitive detail of the procedures and decisions that people use to perform tasks, deconstructing far beyond what can be observed.
  • Usability and User experience – we evaluate key aspects of user-centredness to identify how to optimise efficiency and well-being in the design or redesign of systems.
  • Cognitive analysis –  we examine how people receive and respond to external stimuli and demands using a variety of traditional and innovative techniques to combine subjective and objective measures for stronger reliability and validity.
  • Physical analysis – we assess ergonomic suitability and impacts of workspace and workplace environments using traditional postural analysis methods and digital human modelling analysis, and also use non-optical motion capture in situations where the body is occluded.

Our research and resources

We are a designated team that has been set up to carry out human-centred research and consultancy primarily within the manufacturing industry. Most of our research to date has been conducted within the high value aerospace manufacturing sector as part of the School of Aerospace, Transport and Manufacturing’s Aero-Structure Assembly and Systems Installation Research Group, making a direct contribution to work and process improvements. 

Additionally, we conduct the various human factors research work necessary for the national Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Intelligent Automation which is also principally supported by aerospace industry partners. This mainly encompasses two key strands: ‘human-robot collaboration’ and ‘human skills capture’.

However, our work is not restricted to any particular industrial sector as we are well-equipped to apply a range of state of the art data collection and analysis capabilities in controlled laboratory or industrial settings including:

  • Computer aided design with human modelling and ergonomic assessment;

  • Eye tracking for analysis of visual behaviour, monitoring and response;

  • Industrial laboratory with jigs and tooling for experimental studies of human behaviour with products and processes in realistic shop floor work environments;

  • Non-optical motion capture for measurement of dynamic body activity and static posture analysis in open and occluded environments;

  • Interactive physics simulation to impose real physical activities and motion capture directly into computer aided design modelling;

  • Robot systems of varying type and size for simulation of collaborative industrial work within automated systems and analysis of human-robot interactions.

Current research opportunities

The Group is equipped to deliver educational courses, seminars and organisational training and to supervise PhD/MPhil research programmes. Appropriately qualified individuals or sponsoring organisations should contact Dr Sarah Fletcher to enquire about opportunities or to propose a project outline.