Dream Team: UTA Inquiry Magazine

Spring 2018

Inquiry Magazine Archive

Fall 2017: Building Livability

UTA researchers are creating a more sustainable, affordable North Texas for the future.
Winter 2016: Energy Evolution

From carbon dioxide conversion to landfill mining, researchers at UTA are seeking viable alternative energy options.
Spring 2016: Premium Blend

Found in everything from space shuttles to dental fillings, composite materials have thoroughly infiltrated modern society. But their potential is still greatly untapped, offering researchers ample opportunity for discovery.
Fall 2015: Collision Course

Within the particle showers created at the Large Hadron Collider, answers to some of the universe’s mysteries are waiting.
Spring 2015: Almost Human

Model systems like pigeons can help illuminate our own evolutionary and genomic history.
Fall 2014: Small Wonder

UT Arlington's tiny windmills are bringing renewable energy to a whole new scale.
Winter 2014: Overdue for an Overhaul

The stability of our highways, pipelines, and even manholes is reaching a breaking point.
2012: Mystery solved?

Scientists believe they have discovered a subatomic particle that is crucial to understanding the universe.
2011: Boosting brain power

UT Arlington researchers unlock clues to the human body’s most mysterious and complex organ.
2010: Powered by genetics

UT Arlington researchers probe the hidden world of microbes in search of renewable energy sources.
2009: Winning the battle against pain

Wounded soldiers are benefiting from Robert Gatchel’s program that combines physical rehabilitation with treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
2007: Sensing a solution

Tiny sensors implanted in the body show promise in combating acid reflux disease, pain and other health problems.
2006:Semiconductors: The next generation
Nanotechnology researchers pursue hybrid silicon chips with life-saving potential.
2005: Imaging is everything
Biomedical engineers combat diseases with procedures that are painless to patients.

Dream Team

Researchers using $1 million grant to develop iWork vocational system

In the manufacturing world, automated technology makes up an increasingly large part of the workforce. But what about the people doing their jobs alongside those robots? Two computer science and engineering researchers at UTA received a nearly $1 million National Science Foundation grant to develop a training system that will school humans on just that.

Professor Fillia Makedon and Associate Professor Vassilis Athitsos are building a smart, robot-based system that assesses workers as they perform simulated manufacturing tasks. Known as iWork, it calculates a person's cognitive skills, like attention and task awareness, plus their physical and collaborative abilities to team with a robot.

"iWork will assess and train both human workers and robot co-workers as they collaborate, producing personalized, low-cost vocational training solutions that have a huge societal impact and affect many economic sectors," says Dr. Makedon.

The team has conducted vocational simulation experiments for years, studying ways to train and prepare people for industries where a worker must safely and efficiently collaborate with advanced robots. The system's modular, easily customizable closed-loop "behavior discovery" data flow has four phases: assessment, recommendation, intervention, and evaluation. After each cycle, iWork recommends—with the assistance of a human factors expert—personalized interventions for vocational training and rehabilitation.

The system, Makedon says, "could impact millions of people, including those facing a type of learning or aging disability or returning from military service with some health issues."

Spring 2018

Bot Bud

Dream Team

Researchers using $1 million grant to develop iWork vocational system

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Earth 2.0

Jet Set

Green Conversion

Inquiry Magazine Archive

Bot Bud

Dream Team

Researchers using $1 million grant to develop iWork vocational system

ExploreMore articles from this issue

Explore
More articles from this issue