Safety, Ergonomics and Efficiency in Human-Robot Collaborative Assembly: Design Guidelines and Requirements

The introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies and automation in production and assembly is progressing and bringing a number of changes. While automation in the past was planned and implemented mostly independently of the operator, due to a clear separation of automated processes and manual activities, this has changed considerably in today’s production environment. The operator increasingly works directly with the machine or robot which supports the human in manufacturing or assembly activities. However, with the introduction of collaborative robots in assembly, many companies are faced with the challenge of making their workplaces safe and ergonomic. While collaborative robots present some inherent safety measures which allow the implementation of safe applications, this state usually changes as soon as they are integrated into a working environment and equipped with different type of end-effectors. In addition, ergonomics and efficiency are often ignored. Therefore, new design guidelines for systems integrator designer are needed to develop safe and ergonomic collaborative assembly workstations without neglecting production efficiency requirements. In this paper, a collection and classification of prerequisites and design guidelines are developed starting from international standards, research works and real use cases. These guidelines will support application designers to proper develop and evaluate safe, human-centered and efficient collaborative assembly workstations. Not only the safety of the robotized components is considered, but also a holistic approach is chosen in which operators, the manufacturing and assembly system as well as organizational aspects are examined and summarized within the framework of collaborative assembly.