SWI5: Smart Workers in Industry 5.0 —
Human-Centric Assistance and Work Planning
Workshop Type: Hybrid
Abstract
The transition from Industry 4.0 (focused on automation, data, and connectivity) to Industry 5.0 marks a critical shift: placing the human worker at the center of the production process. However, a significant gap remains between this academic “smart worker” vision and the operational reality of many shop floors in industry. Although idealized laboratory studies and blue-sky research are essential for fundamental discovery and the rigorous isolation of specific variables, this necessary control often creates a disconnect where promising research neglects the heterogeneous and constrained environments of actual factories.
Our workshop SWI5 aims to contribute a forum for discussion around this disconnect by shifting the focus from pure technical feasibility to industrial applicability. We position this workshop as a “reality check” derived from both the academic and industrial perspectives. We aim for a mix of perspectives by inviting scientific contributions on applied technologies to demonstrate what is possible as well as industry position papers to articulate practical challenges, working solutions, and future visions. With this combination, we aim to allow the contrasting of top-down academic innovations with bottom-up industrial requirements. The workshop will function as a collaborative forum to discuss reflections from practice, contrasting how academic concepts withstand the noise and variability of real production lines. Discussion will center on the entire Smart Worker pipeline, including the planning of work instructions, robust interaction detection, adaptive visualization concepts, and instruction representation formats.
The workshop will feature presentations of peer-reviewed scientific papers alongside the distinct presentation of peer-reviewed industry position papers. We plan the agenda to incorporate a dedicated panel discussion, synthesizing the insights from the submitted industry position papers to articulate a consolidated vision of requirements, challenges, and future roadmaps for Industry 5.0, grounding the discourse in industrial reality and defining a concrete applied research agenda.
Goals
The primary goal of SWI5 is to confront theoretical academic contributions with industrial requirements, moving the discussion from “lab-scale” success to “shop-floor” impact.
- Confront Vision with Reality: Juxtapose academic “solution-first” approaches with industry’s “problem-first” perspectives through a dedicated slot (ideally a panel) for position papers.
- Blind Spots: Identify why current assistance technologies (e.g., automated authoring or activity recognition) often fail in practice and define the “missing links” in research.
- Define Practical Requirements: Formulate a set of requirements for “Smart Worker” technologies that account for legacy data, worker acceptance, and environmental constraints.
- Practitioner-Researcher Dialogue: Create a space where industry partners can articulate their long-term visions and immediate needs to the HCI, XR, and AI research communities.
- Synthesize Roadmaps: Conclude the workshop with a unique, dedicated panel discussion to synthesize the practical requirements and future visions articulated in the industry position papers.
List of Topics
We encourage submissions that offer either novel technical solutions, empirical studies, or critical reflections and visions from practice, including but not limited to:
- Intelligent Authoring & Work Planning (digitizing expert knowledge, human-centric approaches to instruction creation, bridging legacy data with modern assistance, context-aware workflows)
- Human-in-the-Loop & Verification (Interfaces for expert validation of automated content, error correction loops, maintaining worker agency, trust in assistance systems)
- Robust Interaction & Recognition (multimodal interfaces like gaze, gesture, or voice in noisy environments; robust activity tracking under constraints; hands-free interaction techniques)
- Human-Centric Visualization & Cognition (adaptive AR/MR visualizations, cognitive load management, attention guidance, adapting information for varying expertise levels)
- Empirical Studies & The Reality Gap (industrial pilot studies, deployment reports, comparative analysis of lab vs. factory performance, infrastructure barriers in brownfield environments)
- Ethics, Safety & Well-being (privacy-preserving sensing, physical ergonomics, fatigue detection, worker acceptance, and autonomy)
Paper Submissions
We invite the submission of scientific studies and industry position papers that address the topics listed above. Manuscripts must be prepared using the official Springer LNCS proceedings template (LaTeX or Microsoft Word) and are required to be between 6 and 10 pages in length (including references). All submissions will undergo a peer review process. For downloadable templates and detailed formatting instructions, please refer to the official PETRA Conference Guide.
Workshop Organizers
Dr. Jonas Blattgerste
University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, Germany
jonas.blattgerste@hs-emden-leer.de (Corresponding Organizer)
Jonas Blattgerste received his B.Sc. degree in Cognitive Computer Science and his M.Sc. degree in Intelligent Systems from Bielefeld University in 2018 and 2019. In 2017, he joined the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology at Bielefeld University as a research assistant, where his research focused on head-mounted Augmented Reality (AR) assistance. In 2019, he moved to the Mixality group at the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer and was responsible for the technical development of AR training simulations for midwifery students in Project Heb@AR. He completed his doctoral thesis on the design space of AR authoring tools at Bielefeld University in 2023, for which he received the UGBi Dissertation Award. Subsequently, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, as a Research & Development Engineer for Mixed Reality at the SMS group GmbH and as a Mixed Reality TechLead for the Raumtänzer GmbH. Since 2025, Jonas Blattgerste is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, where he researches educational and assistive technology.
Prof. Dr. Thies Pfeiffer
University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, Germany
thies.pfeiffer@hs-emden-leer.de
Thies Pfeiffer received the diploma and doctoral degree in computer science from Bielefeld University, Germany, in 2003 and 2010. In 2003, he joined the Psycholinguistics Group of Prof. Dr. Gert Rickheit at the Faculty of Linguistics at Bielefeld University, where his research was focused on sentence processing and the visual world paradigm in a project of the collaborative research center 360 “Situated Artificial Communicators”. In 2006, Thies Pfeiffer joined Prof. Dr. Ipke Wachsmuth’s Artificial Intelligence group to work on the FP6 project “PASION – Psychologically Social Interaction Over Networks” to research telepresence and social network analysis. During that time, he worked on his doctoral thesis on gaze and gesture in natural virtual reality interfaces, which he completed in 2010. Since then, he has been a senior researcher in the Artificial Intelligence group and technical director of the laboratory for artificial intelligence and virtual reality. From 2013 until June 2019, Thies Pfeiffer joined the central lab facilities of the Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University and was responsible for CITEC’s Virtual Reality Laboratory and the Immersive Media Lab at the Faculty of Technology. Since 2019, Thies Pfeiffer is Full Professor for Human-Computer-Interaction at the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, where he heads the Mixality Laboratory, dedicated to research on training and assistance using augmented and virtual reality. Since 2023, he has held a Focus Professorship in Industrial Informatics in the frame of the project AnkerProf.
Dr. Thomas Bär
Daimler Buses GmbH, Germany
thomas.baer@daimlertruck.com
Thomas Bär studied production engineering at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg from 1989 to 1994. From 1994 to 1999, he worked as a researcher at the department of engineering design at the University of Saarland. He received his doctorate in 1998 with a thesis about the integration of finite element analysis in the design process. In 1999, he joined DaimlerChrysler. He started in different positions at Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler, and MTU Aero Engines. From 2001 to 2011, he managed the research activities in the area of the digital factory at Daimler Research & Development. From 2012 to 2019, he was head of the team “Production-oriented Product Validation” within production planning at Mercedes-Benz Passenger Cars. In 2019 he changed to Daimler Buses GmbH, where he is the head of digital production planning.
Prof. Dr. Olov Schelén
LuleĂĄ University of Technology, Sweden
olov.schelen@ltu.se
Olov Schelén (Member of IEEE) is a Professor at Luleå University of Technology (LTU) and CEO at Xarepo AB. His research profile includes distributed systems, computer networking, industrial CPS, containerized software orchestration, and blockchain. He holds a PhD in computer networking from Luleå University of Technology, with the thesis title “Quality of Service Agents in the Internet”. He has more than 30 years of experience in industry and academia and is an author of several patents and publications.
Dr. Atieh Hanna
Volvo Group Trucks Operations, Sweden
atieh.hanna@volvo.com
Atieh Hanna holds a master’s in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Chalmers (2001). Since 2001, she has worked at V olvo AB in different positions, from diagnostic software development over virtual manufacturing to leading production research projects. She received her doctorate in 2023 with her thesis on intelligent and collaborative automation. Currently, she is a researcher at V olvo Group Trucks Operations, responsible for the area of flexible manufacturing and driving a robotic lab at CampX Gothenburg. Here she is collaborating with academia, robotic OEMs, and integrators with the aim of transferring research results into practice at the plants.
Acknowledgment
The SWI5 workshop (“Smart Workers in Industry 5.0 – Human-Centric Assistance and Work Planning”) is partially funded by and strategically timed to align with the advanced stages of the European Union-funded research projects ‘TwinMap’ (13IK028K, NextGenerationEU) and ARTWORK (Itea4, 22019).