An overview of human-robot collaboration in smart manufacturing

Industry 4.0, characterized as smart manufacturing, has revolutionized the industrial world with cutting-edge technologies such as collaborative robots and artificial intelligence etc. Productivity and efficiency are two key factors that determine the success level of manufacturing. Many manufacturers are eager to adopt adaptive, intuitive, collaborative and smart techniques to improve the production lines, including key manufacturing machines and other equipment. In this scenario, robotic systems are playing an increasingly vital role to decrease the need for human labour and increase automation level. Material waste is also decreasing as employing robots could provide both stability and accuracy during work. Currently, great research efforts are growing to respond to market size changes and customization processes. Researchers are focusing on enhancing the interactions between humans and robots in the work environment to exploit the benefits of human experience and the capabilities of robotic systems at the same time. This paper presents an overview of Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) systems that are being employed in smart manufacturing to address the need for collaboration interactions between humans and robot. The research gaps, challenges and future work directions on HRC are highlighted and analysed towards smart manufacturing.