Applied AI for Human-Centric Assembly Workplace Design – An ethics-informed approach

Artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance smart assembly by predicting human motion and adapting workplace design. Using probabilistic models such as Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs), AI systems anticipate operator actions to improve coordination with robots. However, these predictive systems raise ethical concerns related to safety, fairness, and privacy under the EU AI Act, which classifies them as high-risk. This paper presents a conceptual method integrating probabilistic motion modeling with ethical evaluation via Z-Inspection®. An industrial case study using the Smart Work Assistant (SWA) demonstrates how multimodal sensing (motion, gaze) and interpretable models enable anticipatory assistance. The approach moves from ethics evaluation to ethics-informed work design, yielding transferable principles and a configurable assessment matrix that supports compliance-by-design in collaborative assembly.