An overview of cobots for advanced manufacturing: human-robot interactions and research trends

Advanced manufacturing is currently undergoing a significant transition towards human-robot collaboration. This shift has attracted considerable attention from researchers seeking to harness the synergistic potential of human and robotic capabilities across a range of applications and tasks. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the classification of robots, considering key aspects like architecture, mobility, function, size, autonomy, and human contact. The study goes deeper into collaborative robots by emphasizing the levels of interaction between robots and humans. To provide a comprehensive overview, a meticulous analysis of scientific publications spanning a two-decade period is conducted, with a focus on data collected over the past decade. Furthermore, the analysis extrapolates main trends and developments to offer insights for the next decade, thereby facilitating a comparative assessment of publication rates about both collaborative and industrial robots during this timeframe.