Trends of Human-Robot Collaboration in Industry Contexts: Handover, Learning, and Metrics

Abstract

Repetitive industrial tasks can be easily performed by traditional robotic systems. However, many other works require cognitive knowledge that only humans can provide. Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) emerges as an ideal concept of co-working between a human operator and a robot, representing one of the most significant subjects for human-life improvement.The ultimate goal is to achieve physical interaction, where handing over an object plays a crucial role for an effective task accomplishment. Considerable research work had been developed in this particular field in recent years, where several solutions were already proposed. Nonetheless, some particular issues regarding Human-Robot Collaboration still hold an open path to truly important research improvements. This paper provides a literature overview, defining the HRC concept, enumerating the distinct human-robot communication channels, and discussing the physical interaction that this collaboration entails. Moreover, future challenges for a natural and intuitive collaboration are exposed: the machine must behave like a human especially in the pre-grasping/grasping phases and the handover procedure should be fluent and bidirectional, for an articulated function development. These are the focus of the near future investigation aiming to shed light on the complex combination of predictive and reactive control mechanisms promoting coordination and understanding. Following recent progress in artificial intelligence, learning exploration stand as the key element to allow the generation of coordinated actions and their shaping by experience.

Human Robot Interaction - key areas in teamwork.

“…Castro points out that interaction is when two or more people communicate and respond to each other. While collaboration, is when individuals work together to create or achieve the same thing (Castro, 2021). In the work of Ajoudani, a new definition of physical Human-Robot Collaboration (pHRC) is introduced: pHRC is the moment when human(s), robot(s) and the environment come to contact with each other and form a "tightly coupled dynamical system to accomplish a task" (Ajoudani, 2018).…”

“…Interaction (HRI) and collaboration (HRC) can often be confused with each other, or even seen as exactly the same item. Since HRI and HRC symbolize relatively new fields of research, there is not yet a global and absolute definition of the two terms (Castro, 2021). Research into behavior, or the reactions that occur between humans and robots, will require multidisciplinary work.…”

Pose Forecasting in Industrial Human-Robot Collaboration

“…HRC is the study of collaborative processes where human and robot agents work together to achieve shared goals [4,11]. Computer vision studies on HRC are mostly related to pose estimation [10,21,43] to locate the articulated human body in the scene.…”

Augmented Reality for Human–Robot Collaboration and Cooperation in Industrial Applications: A Systematic Literature Review

“…This duality leads to an idealization of a system where humans and robots combine strengths in a way that both contributors could make use of their values to support each other and not be limited by their conditions, and work towards achieving a common goal. This combination of working is addressed as Human–Robot Collaboration (HRC) [ 5 ].…”