Human Robot Interaction – learning how to integrate collaborative robots into manual assembly lines

Abstract

Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) is one of the main challenges for companies today. Despite the trend on collaborative robots, use cases within manufacturing systems seem to be still rare. Although collaborative robots are promised to be one of the crucial innovations for ergonomically assistance for blue collar workers, the integration process into the production process and the preoccupation of workers against robot assistance alike, can be assumed as biggest challenges for companies. One of the reason might be the missing methodology and simulation tools for quick analysis of workplaces, in order to detect possible workloads for robots. The given article presents a developed learning factory seminar for students as well as industrial participants on how to integrate collaborative robots into manual assembly lines. This approach focuses on the problem based learning structure of the seminar and on the essential methods and developed concepts which are necessary to analyze workplaces, simulate robot integration with the possibility of analyzing the distributed workload between the worker and the robot. Tools as a “quick check” analysis for HRC and the simulation software Editor of manual work activities (ema) will be integrated during this concept. Besides the technological implementation and the different organization of work by implementing HRC in a production process, the participants will also discuss the affects and changes for the employees. This will cover the T-O-P (technology-organization-employee) approach [1] and will help to design an implementation project for HRC.