Overview of Human-Robot Collaboration in Manufacturing

Human-robot collaboration (HRC) in the manufacturing context aims to realise a shared workspace where humans can work side by side with robots in close proximity. In human-robot collaborative manufacturing, robots are required to adapt to human behaviours by dynamically changing their pre-planned tasks. However, the robots used today controlled by rigid native codes can no longer support effective human-robot collaboration. To address such challenges, programming-free and multimodal communication and control methods have been actively explored to facilitate the robust human-robot collaborative manufacturing. They can be applied as the solutions to the needs of the increased flexibility and adaptability, as well as higher effort on the conventional (re)programing of robots. These high-level multimodal commands include gesture and posture recognition, voice processing and sensorless haptic interaction for intuitive HRC in local and remote collaboration. Within the context, this paper presents an overview of HRC in manufacturing. Future research directions are also highlighted.