Towards Operator Digital Twins in Industry 5.0: Design Strategies & Experimental Evaluation

The concept of Industry 5.0 is set to revolutionize the landscape of modern manufacturing, emphasizing human-centricity and elevating the well-being of industry workers as a central tenet of the production process. This paper extends this vision by integrating the dimension of health, focusing not only on the well-being of the operator but also on the detection of their health condition, predicting potential issues, and consequently enhancing their overall welfare. Building upon this enhanced perspective, our work explores the role of Operator Digital Twins (ODTs), which are instrumental in creating a symbiotic relationship between human operators and industrial machinery. ODTs act as digital counterparts, reflecting the physical and cognitive states of operators, thus facilitating real-time monitoring of their capabilities, workload, stress levels, and various health-related parameters. The paper delves into the motivations driving the development of ODTs, abstractly models their functions, and outlines the architectural blueprint. We present an initial ODT prototype with wearable technology and simulated data together with a discussion of the experimental insights and outcomes.