ROCO

Robots are rapidly entering sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, and construction. They hold great promise in tackling urgent societal challenges like workforce shortages and an ageing population. But to become truly valuable in everyday work settings, robots must go beyond being advanced machines — they must be designed as reliable, understandable, and usable tools for professionals.

The ROCO project develops a design framework for treating robots as commodities: integrated product-service systems tailored to real-world professional environments. It focuses on design principles, designer competencies, and practical tools that enable creative professionals to develop robots that are intuitive to operate, easy to maintain, and socially accepted on the work floor.

Grounded in practice, the project begins in the agritech sector with case studies in dairy farming in collaboration with Lely. It also explores use cases in construction, healthcare, and maintenance. ROCO translates academic knowledge from human-robot interaction into actionable design strategies and toolkits, strengthening the role of the creative industry in this rapidly evolving field.

Beyond methods and insights, the project contributes to the humanisation of technology: robotics that support human agency, autonomy, and collaboration.

€150,000 will be used as a PPP program grant.