Design of an Assisting Workplace Cell for Human-Robot Collaboration

Abstract

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