Concept of a Self-Learning Workplace Cell for Worker Assistance While Collaboration with a Robot Within the Self-Adapting-Production-Planning-System

For some time, the focus of past research on industrial workplace designs has been the optimization of processes from the technological point of view. Since human workers have to work within this environment the design process must regard Human Factor needs. The operators are under additional stress due to the range of high dynamic processes and due to the integration of robots and autonomous operating machines. There have been few studies on how Human Factors influence the design of workplaces for Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC). Furthermore, a comprehensive, systematic and human-centred design solution for industrial workplaces particularly considering Human Factor needs within HRC is widely uncertain and a specific application with reference to production workplaces is missing. The research findings described in this paper aim the optimization of workplaces for manual production and maintenance processes with respect to the workers within HRC. In order to increase the acceptance of integration of human-robot teams, the concept of the Assisting-Industrial-Workplace-System (AIWS) was developed. As a flexible hybrid cell for HRC integrated into a Self-Adapting-Production-Planning-System (SAPPS) assists the worker while interaction

Design of an Assisting Workplace Cell for Human-Robot Collaboration

Currently, greater attention is paid to the nature of work and workplaces within the digitized industry due to the increasing complexity of work tasks. The operators are under additional stress due to the range of high dynamic processes and due to the integration of robots and autonomous operating machines. There have been few studies on how Human Factors influence the design of workplaces for Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC). Furthermore, a comprehensive, systematic and human-centred design solution for industrial workplaces particularly considering Human Factor needs within HRC is widely uncertain and a specific application with reference to production workplaces is missing. The research findings demonstrated in this paper aim to fill in the gap of designing industrial workplaces for assisting human-robot teams through a human-centred design approach in order to reduce workers’ strain during their interactions with robots and/or machines. Furthermore, the concept of an Assisting-Industrial-Workplace-System (AIWS) has been developed as a flexible hybrid cell for HRC to be integrated into a Self-Adapting-Production-Planning-System (SAPPS), which aims to enable industrial production processes to be adaptable to the constantly changing requirements of volatile markets