Lightweight Robots and Human Interaction in Assembly Systems

Product Design for Automated Remanufacturing—A Case Study of Electric and Electronic Equipment in Sweden

“…Thus, automation solutions in a remanufacturing process are possible if they are safe, cost-efficient and can balance the collaboration between humans and robots utilizing their different strengths in a flexible and productive way. According to Bauer et al [46], there are five various levels of HRC, including cell, coexistence, synchronized, cooperation and collaboration. The cell configuration is a standard industrial robot in a cage example where the human worker cannot interact with the robot.…”

“…According to our previous study [7], there are several potential areas for automation at the studied remanufacturing companies with different levels of HRC (see [46]). In general, the main potential areas for automation were found to be in disassembly, cleaning and reassembly.…”

Human–Co-Bot Interaction and Neuroergonomics: Co-Botic vs. Robotic Systems

“…Co-bots can be defined as novel technological manufacturing systems, which are able to work with a certain degree of dexterity and in conjunction with humans in the same physical workspace (Bauer et al, 2016 ), with no barriers, mainly aiming at improving efficiency, flexibility, and quality in the overall industrial process. Other possible appreciable dimensions are related to ergonomics and safety (Kildal et al, 2018 ), being the co-bot mostly responsible and employable for monotonous and unergonomic tasks.…”

“…In the literature, three categories of factors are highlighted: internal (management support, company structure, research, physical conditions, and receptiveness), external (regulatory environment, business partner), and technological (technology context, degree of innovation, and workspace) (Correia Simões et al, 2020 ). Besides the delicate coexistence of operational efficiency and safety requirements, another possible issue, as suggested by Bauer et al ( 2016 ), because of the novelty of co-bot technology, is that old models assessing efficiency and profitability fail to give a proper cost–benefit analysis, and these are not usually carried out by companies. Furthermore, some dimensions, such as ergonomics, stress, flexibility, and relationship data, are difficult to be measured and quantified.…”

A Unified Architecture for Physical and Ergonomic Human–Robot Collaboration

“…17 In the last years, ergonomics issues are also being considered related to collaborative robots. 18 Despite the rich literature in ergonomics and in safe physical human-robot interaction, to the best of the authors' knowledge the problem of developing a cooperative system combining these two features for industrial co-manipulation has not been fully addressed yet. Indeed, in order to be applicable in realistic scenarios, a quantitative assessment of the operator posture, possibly minimizing the adoption of sophisticated and expensive sensors, has to be adopted when designing the co-manipulation task.…”