Characterizing the state of the art of human-robot coproduction

Abstract

The industry is working towards manufacturing systems consisting of a blend of humans and robots. We look at the development of these systems in the context of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). Also, it is believed that industrial robots with collaboration capabilities with humans will play a crucial role in the change towards reconfigurable and flexible manufacturing systems. Collaboration and teaming are natural social skills of humans. However, little is known about robots and their capabilities in working efficiently with these skills. From our review of the current context of manufacturing, we understand that tasks at a workstation are executed by a combination of various actors and there are many ways to design, control and simulate their interplay. These practices need to be developed for these novel systems as well. Through a survey of existing examples of similar systems, we set an initial step in generating knowledge on the parameters that influence the design of these systems. In these systems we see that humans and robots have certain areas and types of skills through which they engage in joint activity. We compare these examples from three perspectives and draw preliminary conclusions.