A Systematic Classification of Key Performance Indicators in Human-Robot Collaboration

Abstract

Collaborative robotics is one of the foremost innovative technologies increasingly growing in the manufacturing market. Indeed, the disruption of collaborative robots, or cobots, in the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0) has renewed the design and concept of manufacturing workplaces, in terms of flexibility and modularity. As a result, human-robot collaboration (HRC) has broken the standard and old-fashoined idea of performing manual assembly tasks in manufacturing systems. Numerous research studies have underlined that human-robot simultaneous or cooperative activities may improve the efficiency and productivity of companies with a positive impact on the health of workers. However, despite these benefits in the workplace, there is a lack of indicators to monitor this innovative collaboration, leading to losses and waste in terms of efficiency and costs. Moreover, an unwell design of this collaboration might decrease operator’ satisfaction and confidence. Hence, there is a desire to spot, select and systematize the main key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with HRC to boost the productivity of the system. Thus, the motivation for this research is to seek out the proper KPIs within the design of an HRC in line with different aspects of the business.