Mathematical modeling and simulation are fast becoming an essential component of any scientific project. Statistics will be used to underpin the scientific validity of research with cutting-edge, robust statistical methodologies. This will leverage the consortium’s expertise in health informatics, mathematical modeling and statistics.

Environmental health informatics is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the storage, retrieval, organisation, analysis and optimal use of environmental health information, data and scientific knowledge for problem-solving and decision making. Such enabling technology supports many aspects of population health e.g. the National Cancer Registry needs to be coordinated with other data sources.

Disability is a significant environmental health issue since disabled people face challenges arising from exclusionary designs in our environment. This activity aims to apply Universal Design through Low-Cost Modifications to interactions between people, technology and environments. The research will focus on using low-cost sensors and strategies to develop specific technological solutions/interventions to address factors that challenge disabled and elderly people in their living environment.

Healthcare Technology encompasses a wide range of healthcare products used in clinical measurements for diagnosis, assessment, monitoring and treatment of disease. This research activity leverages basic and applied research expertise in Optometry, Diagnostic Ultrasound Imaging and Bio-spectroscopy to develop Healthcare Technologies that are central to the establishment of clinical measurement platforms for diagnosis (and treatment) of environmental health related diseases.

SHRH's focused research programme enhances teaching and learning through undergraduate, postgraduate, continuing professional development (CPD) and outreach activities hence it links education and up-skilling provision directly to practitioner requirements responding to regulatory changes using evidence-based best practices.

Research Group for Human Factors in Safety & Sustainability (HFISS) 

 

Mission 

The Research group for Human Factors in Safety & Sustainability (HFISS) at TU Dublin is an innovative hub of multidisciplinary expertise committed to human centred design and improvement for the safety and sustainability of intelligent complex systems.  This research group promotes the consideration of human and organisational factors in sectors where breakdowns between the automated system and the human operator can have fatal consequences. At HFISS, we provide the interdisciplinary skillset for the development of Collaborative Intelligence systems blending expertise in AI with expertise in Human Factors, Human Reliability Analysis, Neuroergonomics and System Safety Engineering. 

 

The HFISS will address the shortcoming in the methods and approaches in the Human Factors discipline. Researchers at HFISS will also work on the wider agenda for the human-tech revolution on how to create new models of socio-technical system performance so that the human factors can be core to fast technology development. This ambitious goal will be accomplished by the development of modelling and assessment capacities in the areas of Ergonomics, Safety Engineering, Social Sciences, Computer and Data Science for Research Training and Consultancy. The solutions provided will be directly linked with the needs of industry and society to test human machine interface paradigms for safety critical domains as shaped modern technologies. 

 

Research hypothesis/framework 

New technologies such as Artificial Intelligence can support our cognitive strengths to provide relevant information about the status of a safety-critical system and suggest possible procedures to cope with plant status upsets. The research at HFISS provides novel methodologies for collaborative intelligence systems that integrate the most relevant standards to address Human Factors and Neuroergonomics. The exhaustive analyses based on human physiology are adopted to enable better, more efficient and safer working conditions in the modern industry. 

In HFISS we understand that AI systems involved in collaborative robotics (cobotics) can embody human skills to extend our physical capabilities. The end-users should not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing but, in addition, there should always be an oversight of the human performance aspect involved in the design of collaborative systems. This new era opens opportunities that, by no means signifies the displacement of human intervention, but the creation of hybrid teams where humans and machines collaborate synergistically to achieve common goals. 

 

Is it a feasible hypothesis? 

The research group has a multidisciplinary focus as it also stem from Current and ongoing research project successfully awarded to the Research Team members involved such as the Marie Curie ITN Called CISC on collaborative intelligence for Safety Critical tasks, and an ICT-2020 project called Teaming-AI in collaboration with colleagues from the school of computer Science focusing on human factors strand of the research and coordinate our contribution across a number of case studies on AI and Human interactions for advanced manufacturing tasks. 

Our researchers at HFISS are aware that the quality of data and subjectivity of information introduce a not neglectable level of uncertainty that models must account for. Therefore, the data analyses carried out at HFISS takes account for dependencies in a safety-critical system able to adapt its learning and predictive skills depending on the available information. 

 

Is it desirable? 

Overall, the solutions developed at HFISS are designed to address the need for modern socio-technical systems that support the design of Human-Machine Interfaces based on scientific evidence. 

The solutions developed at HFISS are produced to go well beyond the replacement of human operators by the creation of synergic human-machine cooperation to achieve higher performance and create sustainable, inclusive and safer environments. This transformative approach can proceed towards the application of modern technologies that focus on humans and our harmony with the environment. 

Co-participation with industry, the main stakeholders, is key to the expertise and training offered by the Research Group for Human Factors in Safety & Sustainability (HFISS) at TU Dublin. The flourishing network will provide an optimal platform for employability as well as personal growth. Knowledge, expertise, technologies and skills exchange are fundamental part of HFISS accelerating the application of our researchers’ solutions in the public and private sectors. 

Shown below the expanding list of Partners we are currently actively collaborating within research projects in the research group. 

People from TU Dublin 

1. Maria Chiara Leva, Lecturer, School of Food Science & Environmental Health
2. Alberto Caimo. Lecturer in Statistics. School of Mathematical Sciences. Technological University Dublin
3. Mary Kinahanis an organisational psychologist and lecturer in. Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource in the School of Business in TU Dublin. 
4. Bojana Bjegojevic, PhD Candidate, School of Food Science & Environmental Health 

Supporting roles: 

1. Professor James Curtin, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment 
2. Professor Jesus Frias. Food. Leader of the Sustainability and Health Research Hub 

 

Industrial Partners: 

Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR) (https://imr.ie/) 

mBrainTrain (https://mbraintrain.com/) 

MATHEMA (https://www.mathema.com/) 

IVECO Espana sl (https://www.iveco.com/spain/pages/home-page.aspx)  

European DIGITAL SME Alliance (https://www.digitalsme.eu/)  

PILZ Ireland Industrial Automation (https://www.pilz.com/en-IE)  

Adient Interiors d.o.o. (https://www.adient.com/)  

Hugin Expert (https://www.hugin.com/)  

Software Competence Center Hagenberg (SCCH) (https://www.scch.at/en/news)  

Yokogawa Electric Corporation (https://www.yokogawa.com/eu/) 

Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) (https://www.epri.com/)  

Aria (https://www.aria.srl/indexEN.html)  

TFC Research and Innovation Limited (https://tfcengage.com/) 

Genre et Ville (http://www.genre-et-ville.org/)  

Eurecat (https://www.dceureca.eu/) 

Farplas Otomotiv Anonim Sirketi (FARPLAS) (https://farplas.com.tr/index.html) 

Goimek s coop (https://www.goimek.com/es) 

IK4-IDEKO (https://www.ideko.es/) 

ITUNOVA Teknoloji Anonim Sirketi (ITUNOVA) (http://www.itunovatto.com.tr/en/) 

Tyris Software SL (TYRIS) (https://tyris-software.com/en/) 

CORE Innovation and Technology OE (https://www.core-innovation.com/) 

Global Equity & Corporate Consulting SL (SD) (https://lee-bed.eu/partners?view=partner&id=22) 

IDEA-Informatics, Domotics, Environment, Automation – Societa Cooperativa (https://www.paginebianche.it/ancona/idea-soc-coop.7177093) 

Industrias Alegre SA (https://www.ialegre.com/en/home) 

Profactor GmbH (https://www.profactor.at/en/) 

1. lex(https://www.timelex.eu/en)
2. Maria ChiaraLeva;MariaChiara.Leva@TUDublin.ie  

 

Academic partners: 

Fakultet Inzenjerskih Nauka Univerziteta u Kragujevcu (FINK) (http://mfkg.rs/en/) 

Politecnico di Torino (https://www.polito.it/?lang=en)  

University of Milan (https://www.unimi.it/en) 

Instituto de Biomecanica de Valencia (IBV) (https://www.ibv.org/en/home/)  

Edinburgh Napier University (https://www.napier.ac.uk/) 

Wirtschaftsuniversitat Wien (WUW) (https://www.wu.ac.at/) 

University of Mannheim (https://www.uni-mannheim.de/en/)  

University of Strathclyde Glasgow (https://www.strath.ac.uk/) 

 

Mission Alignment 

Our research at HFISS is built around human as the group of the developments, we provide solutions for People. The methodologies and techniques developed at HFISS must be sustainable and environmentally friendly, we care about our Planet. Finally, our existing network between academic and industry bodies will be enlarged to provide smart solutions to real-world challenges, we work together in Partnership. In short, our mission at HFISS is to develop a better and safer world by contributing with the three pillars of TU Dublin’s strategy, People, Planet and Partnership. 

The alignment with ESHI strategy resides in the interdisciplinarity of our experts at HFISS. This offers a multi-level, cross-sectoral approach for each of our solutions in benefit of public health concerns. In this manner, the methodologies and techniques developed at HFISS will contribute to the ESHI’s overarching mission to achieve healthier lives for children, the elderly and vulnerable populations. 

 

Facilities 

The Research Group for Human Factors in Safety & Sustainability (HFISS) is located at the heart of the TU Dublin Grangegorman campus. Comprising buildings with state-of-the-art technology such as the HF Lab within the School of Food Science & the Information, Communications & Entertainment Institute (ICE) and the Environmental Health and the Environmental Sustainability and Health Institute (ESHI) where the group is based. 

 

Projects 

CISC MARIE CURIE International Training Network 

Project start | 1st January 2021 

The European Commission’s guidelines on ethics in artificial intelligence (AI), published in April 2019, recognised the importance of a ‘human-centric’ approach to AI that is respectful of European values. Dedicated training schemes to prepare for the integration of “human-centric” AI into European innovation and industry are now needed. AIs should be able to collaborate with (rather than replace) humans. Safety critical applications of AI technology are “human- in-the-loop” scenarios, where AI and humans work together, as manufacturing processes, IoT systems, and critical infrastructures. 

The concept of Collaborative Intelligence is essential in these scenarios. The CISC EID will nurture and train 14 world class-leading Collaborative Intelligence Scientists for safety critical situations and provide a blue-print for postgraduate training in this area. The development of Collaborative Intelligence systems requires an interdisciplinary skillset blending expertise across AI, Human Factors, Neuroergonomics and System Safety Engineering. This inter-disciplinary skill- set is not catered for in traditional training courses at any level. 

 

Human-AI Teaming Platform for Maintaining and Evolving AI Systems in Manufacturing 

Project Start | 1st January 2021 

Smart Manufacturing is believed to play a critical role in maintaining the competitiveness of organisations, by supporting them at different levels such as process optimisation, resource efficiency, predictive maintenance and quality control. Nevertheless, AI technologies which are currently and rapidly penetrating industrial sectors at those levels remain essentially narrow AI systems. This is due to the lack of self-adaptiveness in the AIs capability to assimilate and interpret new information outside of its predefined programmed parameters. This mean that AI systems are tailored for solving specific tasks on a specific predefined setting and changes in the underlying setting usually requires system adaption ranging from fine-grained parameter adaptations to fully-fledged re-design and re-development of AI systems. 
 
TEAMING_AI project aims at a human AI teaming framework that integrates the strengths of both, the flexibility of human intelligence and scale-up capability of machine intelligence. Human AI teaming is equally motivated to meet the increased need for flexibility in the maintenance and further evolution of AI systems, driven by the increasing personalization of products and service, as well as tackling the barriers of user acceptance and ethical challenges involved in the collaborative environments where artificial intelligence will be used, in order AI can be considered as 'teammate' rather than as a threat. 
 
The TEAMING.AI project will be run over 36 months with a work plan divided into 9 Work Packages. Work Packages from 1 to 5 are devoted to the development of new technology to enhance the interaction between human and machine. Furthermore, Work Packages 6 and 7 wrap the development of 3 use case scenarios. Finally, two final Work Packages (8 and 9) will work respectively on the dissemination, exploitation of results and coordination of the project in a transversal way. 

 

Contact 

1. MSc. Hector Diego Estrada Lugo;EstradaLugo@TUDublin.ie 
2. Bojana Bjegojevic; bbojana13@gmail.com or D20125651@mytudublin.ie