XMANAI partner spotlight – Deep Blue
Q: What is your organization’s role in XMANAI?
A: The role of Deep Blue in XMANAI is to contribute to the ethics assessment of XAI applications in the demonstrators, and to the analysis and design of human-XAI collaboration in the development of XAI applications for the demonstrators. Moreover, Deep Blue is supporting the development of the CNH demonstrator and its manufacturing app.
Q: How does XMANAI relate to your or your team’s background and interests?
A: Deep Blue is a research and consultancy SME specializing in human factor, safety, validation, and scientific dissemination in different domains, such as Aviation, Air Traffic Management, Transportation, Healthcare, and Manufacturing. Deep Blue works with innovation and new technologies applied in several domains, and AI is one of these. XMANAI is a relevant opportunity for us to study and design Human-AI interactions and meaning from a human and an ethics perspective to pass from black-box AI models to explainable ones.
Q: What is the novelty of XMANAI and the main benefits envisaged for your organization?
A: XMANAI contributes to developing a full platform for managing XAI models and pipelines for manufacturing. As such, novel ways of managing and using XAI models will be deployed thanks to the XMANAI platform. Deep Blue will benefit from increasing its knowledge related to Human-XAI interaction, and the design of explainable interfaces, which can be applied to other projects and clients. Also, Deep Blue is working on developing an ethics assessment framework for XAI applications that can be used in another context to evaluate ethical needs and impacts when developing and using XAI solutions.
Q: Which target groups can benefit from XMANAI?
A: AI and even more XAI are technologies whose adoption has a great impact on productivity and optimization. However, they still have high costs and barriers at the entrance. SMEs, especially, face productivity and innovation issues related to a lack of skills and knowledge that prevent the adoption of innovative solutions in their processes. That is where XMANAI could have an impact: the XMANAI platform development will help to integrate easily XAI into manufacturing processes and lower those barriers. The innovation coming from XMANAI will help in spreading the adoption of new innovative technologies and reinforcing a digitalization process that should sustain economic growth and development.
Name: Linda Napoletano
Job title: Head of the Manufacturing Area
Organization: Deep Blue srl
Bio: Linda Napoletano holds a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction. Since 2002, she has been working on EU-co-funded projects aiming at designing and validating humans integration and interactions into highly innovative processes. She has worked for Deep Blue since 2008 as a human factors, user research, and user experience, validation, dissemination, and training expert working in EU, EUROCONTROL, and ENAV projects. With 18+ years of experience with EU projects, she developed deep expertise in different domains (aviation, both in the Air Traffic Management and cockpit design sectors, Institutional communication, and manufacturing) working with partners and clients from all over Europe such as European Commission, THALES, EUROCONTROL, World Food Programme (UN), Università la Sapienza, Tetrapak, Trinity College, MIUR. Linda is currently lecturing on User Experience and human factors at the Higher Institute for Arts and Industries (ISIA) in Pescara – as part of the design curricula.
Name: Andrea Capaccioli
Job title: Senior Consultant
Organization: Deep Blue srl
Bio: Andrea Capaccioli holds a Ph.D. in ICT from the University of Trento (Italy), and a master’s degree in Work, Organization, and Information Systems from the University of Trento in Italy). His main research interests included Participatory Design, Human-Computer Interaction, and commons studies. Andrea’s thesis is about the participatory design of ICTs tools for renewable energy management. He worked as a National Expert for OECD, working on the HEInnovate project as an expert for digital transformation, curating the chapter on Digital Transformation of the HEInnovate report for Italy, as well as other supporting activities for the project. As a Design Researcher for Konica Minolta Laboratory Europe, he worked in creating and validating use cases in various sectors (e.g., cyber-security, manufacturing, and healthcare) for new innovative services based on advanced technology: AI, machine learning, and robotics. Andrea joined Deep Blue srl in July 2020 and he is involved in several European projects (e.g., INDIMO, STRATEGY, XMANAI) as an expert in design research, human factors, and cybersecurity. He is contributing to the identification and analysis of end-user’s and stakeholders’ needs for human-factors methods, explainable AI needs, resilience methods, and tools. He contributed to writing two white papers on Human Factors in Cybersecurity published by the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors. Also, he is following the elaboration and writing of supporting materials and reports.
Name: Debora Zanatto
Job title: Lead Consultant
Bio: Debora Zanatto holds a Ph.D. in Human-Robot interaction from the University of Plymouth, and a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Padua. She has a vast knowledge of Neuroscience techniques as well as social robotics for the development of a trustworthy interaction between humans and robots.
Upon the completion of her Doctoral Degree, she worked at the University of Bristol as Research Associate, dedicating most of her time to the study of Hybrid Autonomous Systems and Human-Machine Interaction. More specifically, she was coordinating a team of researchers for the development of a Human-Swarm Interaction interface while investigating parallel fluctuations of control perception in the context of constrained Human-Computer Interaction.
Debora joined Deep Blue Srl in October 2022 and is currently involved in several projects (e.g. XMANAI, HAIKU, PISTIS, COGNIMAN, HARTU) where she is either contributing to the state of the art of H-AI explainability and trustworthiness, as well as developing guidelines for H-AI teaming in different manufacturing domains.
In her career, she published several peer-reviewed papers and proceedings and she’s been involved as a reviewer for different peer-reviewed journals (e.g., PLOSONE, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Computers in Human Behavior).
