The Use of Personal Data in Automated Digital Manufacturing Environments

My research revolves around the theme: the use of personal data in automated digital manufacturing environments. To study this, my project will involve a three-step process: discovery, design/development and evaluation.

The discovery phase will include the studying of the current literature around trust in automation and further adding to the literature through experiments. To achieve this, I will look at three different case studies which are in potential manufacturing tasks. These are the use of automation in a variable assembly task, the use of automation in a fault detection task and the usage of automation in a human-robot teleoperation task. This is the current stage of my PhD project.

The design/development phase will look to develop a solution that uses personal data to affect a user's trust in an automated system. This might include the use of a workshop with members of manufacturing settings to understand how they feel about trust in automation and what might make them trust automation more if they had to work with it on a regular basis. It should also be possible to develop a digital solution and pull from the previously gathered data on trust to create a solution that would have an effect on trust.

The final evaluation stage will look to use a technology probe to examine the effects the solution has on trust in representative manufacturing environments. This can then be evaluated (both quantitatively and qualitatively) to understand what impact the solution had on a user's trust in automation. The technology probe will be the solution developed during the design/development phase.

We will collaborate with over 40 partners drawn from across FMCG and Food; Creative Industries; Health and Wellbeing; Smart Mobility; Finance; Enabling technologies; and Policy, Law and Society. These will benefit from engagement with our CDT through the following established mechanisms:

- Training multi-disciplinary leaders. Our partners will benefit from being able to recruit highly skilled individuals who are able to work across technologies, methods and sectors and in multi-disciplinary teams. We will deliver at least 65 skilled PhD graduates into the Digital Economy.

- Internships. Each Horizon student undertakes at least one industry internship or exchange at an external partner. These internships have a benefit to the student in developing their appreciation of the relevance of their PhD to the external societal and industrial context, and have a benefit to the external partner through engagement with our students and their multidisciplinary skill sets combined with an ability to help innovate new ideas and approaches with minimal long-term risk. Internships are a compulsory part of our programme, taking place in the summer of the first year. We will deliver at least 65 internships with partners.

- Industry-led challenge projects. Each student participates in an industry-led group project in their second year. Our partners benefit from being able to commission focused research projects to help them answer a challenge that they could not normally fund from their core resources. We will deliver at least 15 such projects (3 a year) throughout the lifetime of the CDT.

- Industry-relevant PhD projects. Each student delivers a PhD thesis project in collaboration with at least one external partner who benefits from being able to engage in longer-term and deeper research that they would not normally be able to undertake, especially for those who do not have their own dedicated R&D labs. We will deliver at least 65 such PhDs over the lifetime of this CDT renewal.

- Public engagement. All students receive training in public engagement and learn to communicate their findings through press releases, media coverage.

This proposal introduces two new impact channels in order to further the impact of our students' work and help widen our network of partners.

- The Horizon Impact Fund. Final year students can apply for support to undertake short impact projects. This benefits industry partners, public and third sector partners, academic partners and the wider public benefit from targeted activities that deepen the impact of individual students' PhD work. This will support activities such as developing plans for spin-outs and commercialization; establishing an IP position; preparing and documenting open-source software or datasets; and developing tourable public experiences.

- ORBIT as an impact partner for RRI. Students will embed findings and methods for Responsible Research Innovation into the national training programme that is delivered by ORBIT, the Observatory for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT (www.orbit-rri.org). Through our direct partnership with ORBIT all Horizon CDT students will be encouraged to write up their experience of RRI as contributions to ORBIT so as to ensure that their PhD research will not only gain visibility but also inform future RRI training and education. PhD projects that are predominantly in the area of RRI are expected to contribute to new training modules, online tools or other ORBIT services.