IMPROVING HUMAN AWARENESS DURING COLLABORATION WITH ROBOT: REVIEW

Abstract

Human-robot collaboration is a widespread topic within the concept of Industry 4.0. Such collaboration brings new opportunities to improve ergonomics and innovative options for manufacturing automation; however, most of the modern collaborative industrial applications are limited by the fact that neither collaborative side is fully aware of the partner: the human operator may not see the robot movement due to own engagement in the work process, and the collaborative robot simply has no means of knowing the position of the operator. Dynamic replanning of the robot trajectory with respect to the operator's current position can increase the efficiency and safety of cooperation since the robot will be able to avoid collisions and proceed in task completion; however, the other side of communication remains unresolved. This paper provides a review of methods of improving human awareness during collaboration with a robot. Covered techniques include graphical, acoustic and haptic feedback implementations. The work is focused on the practical applicability of the approaches, and analyses present challenges associated with each method.