Identifying the potential of human-robot collaboration in automotive assembly lines using a standardised work description

Abstract

The increased availability of sensitive and compliant lightweight robots for use in assembly lines collaborating with the human promises significant improvements of different socio-technical aspects of work. Workplaces can be reorganized to assign monotonous or unergonomic tasks to the robot. Also unproductive jobs currently done by the human can be minimized by an improved work distribution. Since there is only little experience with the new generation of collaborating robots, the implementation of workplaces shared by human and robot is often influenced by subjective perspectives. In this paper, an approach to assess the collaboration potential of workplaces is presented. Based on existing standardised work descriptions, the suitability for human-robot collaboration can be derived and therefore a more objective evaluation and comparison of the whole assembly can be achieved.