New trends in the design of human-machine interaction for CNC machines

The development of numerical control technology, the increasing efficiency of production processes and the high automation level have allowed a great improvement of Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines. Although CNC machines allow short working times and the precise repeatability of the processing, they suffer from some major disadvantages: they need to be controlled and managed by an expert operator who has to interact with the user interface to complete her/his tasks and set-up the machine. Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, there are no thorough studies on how human operators manage and perceive the interaction with these machines. As a result, the interfaces of most current CNC machines present several limitations. Considering the advantages in adding ergonomics and usability analysis to increase quality, productivity and market competitiveness, the industrial world is moving to develop new interfaces for CNC machines, to improve users' experience. Starting from our experience with woodworking CNC machines, this paper reports, first, an analysis of the CNC process from the point of view of human-machine interaction; specifically, main issues and criticalities are outlined. Then, major new trends in modern interfaces for CNC machines are presented, highlighting the tendency to integrate user experience in the design of interfaces. Copyright (C) 2019. The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.