Economic and ergonomic performance enhancement in assembly process through multiple collaboration modes between human and robot

Abstract

Collaborative robots have open new ways of designing assembly processes, thanks to their ability to share work space with operators. not only may they support the economical performance, but they can also improve the overall ergonomics. Building on existing work on task allocation problems, the authors study further the collaboration opportunities between operator and robot, namely cooperation phases (type of collaboration where both operator and robot act on the same work piece). This work proposes a new formulation of the related problem, and solutions are sought through heuristics methods, to investigate whether concurrent usage of different collaboration modes delivers better performance. The results indicate that cooperation mode enables higher process performances while controlling ergonomic risks. With a concern for real-life application, it has been applied on a real case study to verify its applicability.

Keywords:

• Collaborative robots
• human robot cooperation
• multiple collaboration mode
• economic performance
• ergonomic risk

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, AQ, upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To trigger relaxation time in the presented case study, some component weights have been increased, within the capability range of the selected collaborative robot

2 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTe59h3sT9fxOv6UBvzsnGg/videos

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony Quenehen

Anthony Quenehen is an associate professor of Arts et Métiers Institute ofTechnology, Lille campus, where he received in 2022 his PhD degree in collaborative robot implementation in production systems. Prior to his academic career, he had a 20-year experience in automotive industry with Toyota Motors as a senior manager in Quality Control. His research interests cover Lean Manufacturing techniques, Advanced Manufacturing Technologies, and their possible interactions, as well as education science and design based research.

Nathalie Klement

Nathalie Klement is currently an assistant professor in industrial engineering and operational research at Arts et Métiers, Lille in the LISPEN laboratory. She works on optimisation problems using approximate methods, used to solve logistic and industrial problems at all decision levels: system sizing at a strategic level, planning and resource allocation at a tactical level, and scheduling at an operational level. All these problems are solved in today's 4.0 context, for example reconfigurable manufacturing systems to cope with production variability in number and type.

Amine Mohamed Abdeljaouad

Mohamed Amine Abdeljaouad is a post-doctoral research engineer at the CEA organisation and the Lispen Laboratory of Arts et Métiers Lille (France). He has completed a PhD in January 2019 at the Computer Science department of the Faculty of Sciences of Tunis (University of Tunis El Manar, Tunisia) and also has a Research Master Degree from the same University. His work is related to operations research, modelling, planning and scheduling optimisation in production and healthcare fields.

Lionel Roucoules

Lionel Roucoules is currently professor at Arts et Métiers Institute (ENSAM -- France -- www.ensam.eu) on the campus of Aix en Provence. He has been promoted in September 2008. He was previously associate professor at the Université de Technologie de Troyes (UTT, France). He has been graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (agrégation) in 1994. He received his PhD in 1999 from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble in collaboration (European label) with the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain). Afterwards he spent on year of post-Doctoral study at the University of Twente (Netherlands). The context of his research globally concerns System Engineering process treated as collaborative and integrated activities in PLM context. That provides a new approach for design and decision-making rationale, knowledge synthesis embedded in agile by least commitment design thinking approach. This approach is supported by IT Model Based System Engineering to provide Interoperable and Reconfigurable IT system in ever changing industrial context. He is member of the international IFIP WP5.1 and associate member of the CIRP.

Olivier Gibaru

Olivier Gibaru www.oliviergibaru.org is full professor at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Arts et Métiers Institute of Technology, Lille campus. He obtained his PhD in Applied Mathematics in 1997. His main research interests include: geometry, AI, cognition for robotic applications and control engineering. He was the coordinator of the H2020 ColRobot project www.colrobot.eu. He co-authored more than 80 scientific articles (more than 1400 citations with h-index of 22 in Google Scholar). He is member of the IEEE IES scientific subcommittee on Computer Vision and Human-Machine Interaction in Industrial and Factory Automation and member of the ‘Comité de liaison’ SIGMA of the French Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is also an expert for the French Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Technologies group concerning the French robotics future.