Productive Teaming: Productive Teaming Symposium

Productive Teaming Symposium

28.03.2023 -

One symposium, three universities: Successful interdisciplinary dialogue between scientists on the human-centred future of production

The tri-university research initiative "Productive Teaming" brought together more than 40 scientists from different institutions to discuss an exchange as well as cooperation possibilities on the topic of "Teaming between human and artificial agents" and to develop solution approaches for increasing productivity.

The symposium of the research initiative "Productive Teaming" took place at TU Chemnitz on 17 March 2023. More than 40 scientists from various institutions of the Chemnitz-Ilmenau-Magdeburg Research and Innovation Network ("CHIM") accepted the invitation, including representatives from TU Chemnitz, OVGU Magdeburg, TU Ilmenau and the Fraunhofer Institute in Chemnitz, Ilmenau and Magdeburg.

At the opening of the symposium, the three coordinators of the research initiative, Prof. Dr. Dr. Marco Ragni (TU Chemnitz, Head of the Centre for Man and Technology and the Chair of Predictive Behaviour Analysis), Prof. Dr. Frank Ortmeier (OVGU Magdeburg, Head of the Chair of Software Engineering) and Prof. Dr. Gunter Notni (TU Ilmenau, Head of the Department of Quality Assurance and Industrial Image Processing), presented both the research initiative itself and the grouping of the individual projects. In this way, the participants of the event were already able to gain an overview of the subject areas and projects of the other participants.

Afterwards, the participants had the opportunity to briefly present their own project in a poster session with a total of 25 posters. This showed the diversity of the research projects and the expertise of the scientists in the various fields. During and after the poster session, the participants took the opportunity to discuss the presented projects, to work out further questions and possible solutions and to develop ideas for further research activities. This symposium thus offered the scientists a suitable platform for exploring various cooperation possibilities and also provided the impetus for a planned manifesto on "Productive Teaming", which is to be published this year.

In a concluding discussion round, Prof. Ragni summarised the results of the day and gave an outlook on how these results can be integrated and further developed in the advancing research of "Productive Teaming". Prof. Ragni: "The Productive Teaming symposium was a successful event that gave those involved in the research initiative the opportunity to gain valuable insights into the research activities of their colleagues and to enter into possible collaborations". The research initiative thus underlines the importance of the interdisciplinary interface between artificial intelligence (AI), psychology and mechanical engineering, not only in Central Germany, but also on a national and international level. Each university brings its respective strengths from its core competencies to the table, creating a symbiosis of numerous subject areas and complementing each other. "With our CHIM research network, we also promote cross-location cooperation and exchange between researchers at the three locations in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, both for current and future research projects and initiatives," says Ragni.

About Productive Teaming

Current technological development enables highly complex, intelligent, adaptive and autonomous cyber-technical systems that can support, complement and surpass the cognitive abilities and skills of humans in solving tomorrow's new challenges. This constant evolution of increasingly powerful and intelligent technologies is currently leading to equally new and complex challenges in dynamic production systems, which need to be addressed quickly and consistently. A key challenge in the field of production systems in the future will be to solve highly complex problems with myriad parameters that far exceed the capacities of individuals and conventional human teams. Therefore, to solve these problems and increase productivity, it will ultimately be necessary to form teams of people and production systems that are specialised in such "teaming" between people and production systems. Productive Teaming" is a joint research initiative of the TU Chemnitz, the TU Ilmenau and the OVGU Magdeburg, which has developed out of the already existing research and innovation network "CHIM". The aim of this initiative is to better understand teaming between human and artificial agents with the help of overarching topic complexes and to find an answer to the following research question, among others: Can intelligent systems be cognitively augmented in such a way that they are able to dynamically anticipate the abilities and needs of the team partner within this process?

Further information on the research initiative can be found here: https://chim.hrz.tu-chemnitz.de/projekte/productive-teaming/

Symposium 2023 - Copyright TU Chemnitz (Marlies Facius/Nithin Kashyap Venkatesha) (11 Bilder)