Future of Ergonomics in the age of Industry 4.0-Some Perspectives.

Abstract

Industrial Revolution has transformed the agrarian and handicraft based economies into economies based on mechanized manufacturing and the factory system. The industries and organizations have been leveraging the advances in tools and technologies in their quest to make themselves relevant, smart and competitive. The ever changing work systems have necessitated the evolution of ergonomic perspectives from merely focusing on adjusting the human to the other components of work system in terms of physical and physiological adjustments .The authors advocate the need to change in the perspective of ergonomics to cognitive adjustments in the emerging environment of Industry 4.0.This work aims at understanding the ergonomic perspectives in cyber physical environment characterized with work involving Augmented Reality, Collaborative Robots and Exoskeletons.