Evaluation of AI-Based Digital Assistants in Smart Manufacturing

Industry 5.0 complements the Industry 4.0 paradigm by highlighting research and innovation as drivers for a transition to a sustainable, human-centric and resilient industry. In this context, new types of interactions between operators and machines are facilitated, that can be realized through artificial intelligence (AI) based and voice-enabled Digital Intelligent Assistants (DIA). Apart from the existing technological challenges, this direction requires new methodologies for the evaluation of such technological solutions that will be able to treat AI in manufacturing as a socio-technical system. In this paper, we propose a framework for the evaluation of voice-enabled AI solutions in Industry 5.0, which consists of four dimensions: the trustworthiness of the AI system; the usability of the DIA; the cognitive workload of individual users; and the overall business benefits for the corporation.