In order to support the decision-making process of industry on how to implement Augmented Reality (AR) in production, this article wants to provide guidance through a set of comparative user studies. The results are obtained from the feedback of 160 participants who performed the same repair task on a switch cabinet of an industrial robot. The studies compare several AR instruction applications on different display devices (head-mounted display, handheld tablet PC and projection-based spatial AR) with baseline conditions (paper instructions and phone support), both in a single-user and a collaborative setting. Next to insights on the performance of the individual device types for the single mode operation, the study is able to show significant indications on AR techniques are being especially helpful in a collaborative setting.

In recent years, mass-customization and on-demand production have spread to larger ground. To accommodate these developments, manufacturing systems are being transformed to allow more flexibility and agility. One of the technologies that allow flexibility and agility is Collaborative Robots. The design and implementation of Intelligent Manufacturing Systems is a complex activity that requires bridging between disciplines. With the introduction of Collaborative Robots, new disciplines are added to this activity, that need to be linked to existing design methods and procedures. Currently, the lack of these links is a bottleneck for Small and Medium sized Enterprises. These have limited resources for implementation. In this article, we introduce a Human-Robot Coproduction Design Methodology, with the aim of raising the capacity of Intelligent Manufacturing System designers for reasoning on collaboration between humans and robots in manufacturing. The methodology comprises four procedural steps: analysis, modeling, simulation, and evaluation, with specific methods, tools and instruments. The methodology has been evaluated in a laboratory environment by performing a pilot study with designers. While the current implementation of the methodology and its instrumentation is limited, it has been shown that the methodology enables quick design iterations during the conceptual design phase of Human-Robot Coproduction, thanks to procedures that have been tailored for this novel form of organizing and structuring production processes in Intelligent Manufacturing Systems.

Recently, robots are making their way towards the small and medium enterprises at a quick pace. This is due to market demand and enabled by reduction in costs of robot systems. If robots can be introduced strategically in existing production workflows, productivity could be increased. However, the task division and interaction between human and robot co-workers need to be optimized in order to achieve this. This work-in-progress paper presents a pilot setup to explore such scenarios. We discuss early findings and we present our vision for the future of human robot coproduction.