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Abstract

Greater cognitive task load and the growing shortage of highly skilled labor provide ground for assistance systems based on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Conventional graphical interfaces to such systems are often hard to understand, obtrusive, and unintuitive. Natural language interactions provide one approach to address this shortcoming. Recently, voice-enabled Digital Intelligent Assistants (DIAs) for manufacturing matured enough to satisfy various industrial requirements. Their adoption by SMEs, however, is challenging due to the high cost of developing, deploying, and maintaining them. This paper presents the vision of a white-label shop for DIAs and human-AI collaboration in manufacturing. This shop and its associated concepts seek to reduce costs by introducing a one-stop shop where SMEs can find various elements necessary to introduce DIAs in their organizations.

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Acknowledgments

This work is partly funded by: (i) the European Union’s Horizon 2020 project COALA “COgnitive Assisted agile manufacturing for a LAbor force supported by trustworthy Artificial Intelligence” (Grant agreement No 957296); and (ii) the European Union’s Horizon Europe project WASABI “White-label shop for digital intelligent assistance and human-AI collaboration in manufacturing” (Grant agreement No 101092176). The work presented here reflects only the authors’ view, and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

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Correspondence to Alexandros Bousdekis .

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Wellsandt, S. et al. (2023). Fostering Human-AI Collaboration with Digital Intelligent Assistance in Manufacturing SMEs. In: Alfnes, E., Romsdal, A., Strandhagen, J.O., von Cieminski, G., Romero, D. (eds) Advances in Production Management Systems. Production Management Systems for Responsible Manufacturing, Service, and Logistics Futures. APMS 2023. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 689. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43662-8_46

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43662-8_46

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