Anthropocentric Approach for Smart Assembly: Integration and Collaboration

Abstract

Recently, anthropocentric or human-centric approaches renewed its importance in smart manufacturing especially for assembly applications where human dexterity and informal knowledge are dispensable at present and in the near future. This paper analyzes the integration, design, and collaboration issues regarding anthropocentric researches in the past few years mainly in assembly domain. First of all, towards closed-loop system integration, the researches on integrating human in the cyber-physical system are elaborated and summarized. Then, human-centric designs (HCD) especially in shop-floor assembly field are analyzed. To emphasize human-robot hybrid assembly, several related issues including collaboration paradigm, task planning and assignment, interaction interfaces, and safety are discussed. At last, a survey on human cognitive and social limitation management is elaborated. Related research challenges and directions are discussed.

Challenges for Manufacturing SMEs in the Introduction of Collaborative Robots

“…Other challenges are related to involvement and training, including the need for education and expertise and involving the employees in the process. The literature review points out the need for skilled, educated workers to introduce new technology in manufacturing systems in general [39] and in the cobot introduction [24,40,41]. Training and education have been identified as essential factors for introducing cobots in SMEs, as well on a management level, regarding technology awareness and benefits, as on an employee level, regarding technical training and understanding the functionalities [40].…”

Human augmentation, not replacement: A research agenda for AI and robotics in the industry

“…The notion of Augmented Worker or Operator 4.0 (Romero et al, 2020) refers to an anthropocentric approach to manufacturing (Dworschak and Zaiser, 2014): The machine is seen as a tool to empower the workers, rather than replace them. Indeed, the world of industrialization is experiencing a change of paradigm: while the focus has been on human replacement for decades, it is now becoming clear that humans will still be needed in factories in the foreseeable future (Tan et al, 2019;Romero et al, 2020). To cope with the growing versatility of the market, some authors argue further that companies can achieve the largest boosts in performance by leveraging human-machine complementary strengths (Daugherty and Wilson, 2018): The flexibility of human work combined with the efficiency of automation.…”

An Empirical Evaluation of Prediction by Partial Matching in Assembly Assistance Systems

“…Since the pioneering work of Yamada et al [9], a consistent flow of research on skill assistance systems for workers has been conducted. A review of smart manufacturing systems is provided in [10]. A human-machine centric assembly station is proposed by Rojas et al [11].…”