Abstract

The concept of industrial human-robot collaboration (HRC) is becoming increasingly attractive as a means for enhancing manufacturing productivity and product. However, due to traditional preventive health and safety standards, there have been few operational examples of true HRC, so it has not been possible to explore the organisational human factors that need to be considered by manufacturing organisations to realise the benefits of industrial HRC until recently. Charalambous, Fletcher and Webb (2015) made the first attempt to identify the key organisational human factors for the successful implementation of industrial HRC through an industrial exploratory case study. This work enabled (i) development of a theoretical framework of key organisational human factors relevant to industrial HRC and (ii) identification of these factors as enablers or barriers. Although identifying the key organisational human factors (HF) was an important step, it presented a crucial question: when should practitioners involved in HRC design and implementation consider these factors? New industrial processes are typically designed and implemented using a maturity or readiness evaluation system, but these do not incorporate of or link to any formal considerations of HF. The aim of this paper is to expand on the previous findings and link the key human factors in the theoretical framework directly to a recognised industrial maturity readiness level system to develop a new Human Factors Readiness Level (HFRL) tool for system design practitioners to optimise successful implementation of industrial HRC.

Highlights

  • 1.1 Concept of industrial human-robot collaboration (HRC)Many manufacturing processes can be optimised with the seamless integration of industrial robots and human operators so that the superior attributes of each are best exploited

  • In order to do that, it is imperative for a selective number of shop floor employees to participate and provide their insight regarding the manual process

  • As the project development progresses (i.e. technology readiness level (TRL) 3 and 4), it is important to intensify human factors integration: (i) At this stage, the system integrator (SI) will be involved and it is important to have a clear awareness of the manual process and its complexities in order to supply a process capable system

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Summary

Concept of industrial HRC

Many manufacturing processes can be optimised with the seamless integration of industrial robots and human operators so that the superior attributes of each are best exploited. Humans react very well in response to external influences and variabilities, such as engineering tolerances or process variations while industrial robots have the ability to handle high payloads with greater speed and accuracy, without suffering from fatigue. The human physical dexterity and cognitive reasoning that is still needed for many skilled production tasks cannot yet be replaced by robots, but robots can provide the strength and repeatability needed for many less skilled and unhealthy tasks [1]. Combining the advantages of human workers and robots leads to the development of industrial human-robot collaboration (HRC)

Human factors for the implementation of manufacturing technologies
Previous work on industrial HRC
Purpose of this paper: introducing the Human Factors Readiness Level tool
Technology readiness levels
TRLs 1 and 2
TRLs 3 and 4
Summary
Trial execution
TRLs 5 and 6
Increasing use of the system on the shop floor for trials
Summary of the Human Factors Readiness Level tool
Future work
Development of a database
Further development of the Human Factors Readiness Level Tool
Full Text
Published version (Free)

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