Collaboration with Cobots in the Contemporary Working Environment

Abstract

Slovenians like new technologies. However, they hold specific fears that robots will take their working places. Robots represent opportunities for providing service as the population grows old, and robots will be needed to help old people. Especially in fields where workers are scarce, such as healthcare, knowledge of the interaction human-cobot will be needed. Robots have been present in highly supervised and stable environments for decades. Due to extreme progress in robotics, they have moved among people, in less predictable environments, and have a more human-like appearance. The purpose of our paper is to present cases of cobots in Slovenian hospitals. We use qualitative methodology. Results of our desktop research are presented. Our paper researches contemporary management challenges in healthcare. Before, and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for healthcare professionals was a critical challenge as the nursing staff was overburdened. It is hard to fill all the necessary nursing positions in hospitals. The problem seems to be getting even bigger due to the growing trend of the elderly population around the world. In the theoretical part, we present the interaction between human being-robot. In the empirical part, we present three examples of the incorporation of robots in hospitals in Slovenia and expose some of the current challenges, benefits, and difficulties of working with robots.