Human-robot collaborative assembly in cyber-physical production: Classification framework and implementation

The production industry is moving towards the next generation of assembly, which is conducted based on safe and reliable robots working in the same workplace alongside with humans. Focusing on assembly tasks, this paper presents a review of human-robot collaboration research and its classification works. Aside from defining key terms and relations, the paper also proposes means of describing human-robot collaboration that can be relied on during detailed elaboration of solutions. A human-robot collaborative assembly system is developed with a novel and comprehensive structure, and a case study is presented to validate the proposed framework. © 2017

Symbiotic Assembly Systems – A New Paradigm

AbstractAssembly systems have been pressed in recent years to provide highly adaptable and quickly deployable solutions in order to deal with unpredictable changes following market trends. This has led to the development of multiple paradigms, namely Flexible Assembly System, Holonic Assembly Systems, Evolvable Assembly Systems, Modular Assembly systems, etc. Mostly these focus on increasing availability of automation, however this focus has overshadowed the human element in assembly systems. The lack of a clear human element in these approaches resulted in non-necessary automation and increase complexity. This paper proposes a new paradigm of Symbiotic Assembly Systems (SAS) in order to integrate the human aspects into these developments. The motivation is human actors should be treated as an intrinsic component of assembly systems. This would result in a system that can take advantage of its component's individual strengths (human or machines), and create a symbiotic environment. Beyond machine automation, human interventions in the system need not only to be modelled as processes but also integrated into the whole system operation. The idea builds on biological systems and their ability to establish symbiotic environments resulting in optimal collaborations. This paper proposes the conceptual vision of Symbiotic Assembly Systems and identifies the necessary developments required to achieve such paradigm. Furthermore it reports on how the developments from other paradigms can be integrated into SAS. An illustrative example is presented to demonstrate the potential of this approach

Intelligence and Autonomy

The terms “Intelligent Buildings” and “Smart Buildings” have been used in the building industry for almost two decades. They refer to a wide variety of capabilities integrated into the building fabric based on computer and communications technologies

RAF | A framework for symbiotic agencies in robotic – aided fabrication

The research presented in this paper utilizes industrial robotic arms and new material technologies to model and explore a different conceptual framework for ‘robotic-aided fabrication’ based on material formation processes, collaboration, and feedback loops. Robotic-aided fabrication as a performative design process needs to develop and demonstrate itself through projects that operate at a discrete level, emphasizing the role of the different agents and prioritizing their relationships over their autonomy. It encourages a process where the robot, human and material are not simply operational entities but a related whole. In the pre-actual state of this agenda, the definition and understanding of agencies and the inventory of their relations is more relevant than their implementation. Three test scenarios are described using human designers, phase-changing materials, and a six-axis industrial robotic arm with an external sensor. The common thread running through the three scenarios is the facilitation of interaction within a digital fabrication process. The process starts with a description of the different agencies and their potentiality before any relation is formed. Once the contributions of each agent are understood they start to form relations with different degrees of autonomy. A feedback loop is introduced to create negotiation opportunities that can result in a rich and complex design process. The paper concludes with speculation on the advantages and possible limitations of semi-organic design methods through the emergence of patterns of interaction between the material, machine and designer resulting in new vistas towards how design is conceived, developed, and realised

Alternative model-building for the study of socially interactive robots

In this discussion paper, we consider the potential merits of applying an alternative approach to model building (Empirical Modelling, also known as EM) in studying social aspects of human-robot interaction (HRI). The first section of the paper considers issues in modelling for HRI. The second introduces EM principles, outlining their potential application to modelling for HRI and its implications. The final section examines the prospects for applying EM to HRI from a practical perspective with reference to a simple case study and to existing models

Symbol Emergence in Robotics: A Survey

Humans can learn the use of language through physical interaction with their environment and semiotic communication with other people. It is very important to obtain a computational understanding of how humans can form a symbol system and obtain semiotic skills through their autonomous mental development. Recently, many studies have been conducted on the construction of robotic systems and machine-learning methods that can learn the use of language through embodied multimodal interaction with their environment and other systems. Understanding human social interactions and developing a robot that can smoothly communicate with human users in the long term, requires an understanding of the dynamics of symbol systems and is crucially important. The embodied cognition and social interaction of participants gradually change a symbol system in a constructive manner. In this paper, we introduce a field of research called symbol emergence in robotics (SER). SER is a constructive approach towards an emergent symbol system. The emergent symbol system is socially self-organized through both semiotic communications and physical interactions with autonomous cognitive developmental agents, i.e., humans and developmental robots. Specifically, we describe some state-of-art research topics concerning SER, e.g., multimodal categorization, word discovery, and a double articulation analysis, that enable a robot to obtain words and their embodied meanings from raw sensory--motor information, including visual information, haptic information, auditory information, and acoustic speech signals, in a totally unsupervised manner. Finally, we suggest future directions of research in SER.Comment: submitted to Advanced Robotic

J Occup Environ Hyg

The increasing use of robots in performing tasks alongside or together with human co-workers raises novel occupational safety and health issues. The new 21st century workplace will be one in which occupational robotics plays an increasing role. This article describes the increasing complexity of robots and proposes a number of recommendations for the practice of safe occupational robotics.CC999999/Intramural CDC HHS/United States2017-03-01T00:00:00Z26554511PMC477979