HARMONICA

Workers in advanced recycling manufacturing face a variety of risks. These include exposure to hazardous chemicals, dust, and biological agents, in addition to physical hazards associated with heavy machinery and repetitive movements. These risks can lead to respiratory problems, skin irritation, physical injuries, and chronic health issues. HARMONICA’s unique vision is to transform current cognitive and physical augmentation technologies into more supportive tools for operators within the contexts of hazardous environments such as within advanced recycling manufacturing.

To do this, HARMONICA starts from a human centric perspective and enabled digital twin modelling. This will leverage the safety and efficiency of human operators in dynamics and hazardous environments through a Psy-PhyTwin which embeds cognitive and physical submodels of workers into an industrial digital twin. This is a paradigm shift from machine-centric to a human-inclusive ecosystem within which people and technology develop together. Context-aware perception enhanced by photonics provides precise insight into shop-floor dynamics. Semi-autonomous mobile manipulators (AMMs) will be developed to relieve workers from the more dangerous and fatiguing tasks, enabling them to focus on skilled, creative, and supervisory roles. A mixed-reality learning environment accelerates training and continuous upskilling for workers, managers, and supervisors, supporting coaching, workflow optimisation, and process safety. This will be based on project work that moves beyond efficiency-driven paradigms towards more human centric work spaces and tooling. The guiding principles within HARMONICA are participatory co-design, explainable and controllable technology, equitable access to training, lifelong learning, and alignment of digital innovation with environmental and societal sustainability.

ITI-CERTH has a key scientific and technical role in the HARMONICA project by leading WP4-5 on multimodal sensing and perception, as well as tasks on quality assurance and risk management, real-time physiological sensing and teaming, object-centric scene perception, and the adaptive vision companion. The developed solutions cover multimodal sensing, human cognitive and physiological state assessment, human action and intention understanding, industrial scene perception, and explainable visual assistance for safer and more effective human–machine collaboration.

Consortium

THE QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST (QUB)
UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TRENTO (UNITN)
ROBOTNIK AUTOMATION SL (ROB)
SINTEF AS (SINTEF)
ETHNIKO KENTRO EREVNAS KAI TECHNOLOGIKIS ANAPTYXIS (CERTH)
ERASMUS UNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM (EUR)
EUROPEAN FEDERATION FOR WELDING JOINING AND CUTTING (EWF)
FRAUNHOFER GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG EV (Fraunhofer)
EUROPEAN METAL RECYCLING LIMITED (EMR)
NTT DATA ITALIA SPA (NTTD)
MAINFLUX LABS DOO BEOGRAD ZVEZDARA (MAINFLUX)
VEOLIA ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES BELUX (VEOLIA)
BRONNEBERG BV (BRONNEBERG BV)
IRIS TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS, SOCIEDAD LIMITADA (IRIS)
CNV (CNV)