Trust-Triggered Cyber-Physical-Human System for Human-Robot Collaboration in Flexible Manufacturing

We proposed and investigated a bidirectional trust- triggered cyber-physical-human (CPH) system framework for human-robot collaborative assembly in flexible manufacturing. For this purpose, we developed a one human-one robot hybrid cell where the human and the robot collaborated with each other to perform the assembly operation of different manufacturing components in a flexible manufacturing setup. In the proposed framework, we configured the human-robot collaborative system using three interconnected components of a CPH system: cyber system (software system), physical system (the robot, sensors and necessary hardware), and human system (the human co-worker, supervisor and work environment). We divided the functions of the CPH framework into three interconnected modules: computing, communication and control. We proposed a model to compute human and robot’s bidirectional trust in real-time to monitor and control the performance of the CPH framework. We evaluated the performance of the framework implementing it on a human-robot collaborative assembly setup for different experimental conditions considering variations in: (i) computing complexity, (ii) communication complexity, (iii) control complexity, and (iv) human perceptual complexity. We compared the results among those experimental conditions and identified a condition that enabled the CPH framework to demonstrate the highest level of performance. The results revealed satisfactory performance of the CPH framework in terms of human-robot interaction, and task efficiency and quality. The results can help incorporate modularity and objectivity in the design, development, analysis and control of human-robot collaborative systems configuring them in the form of a CPH framework and thus enhance the scope, ease and effectiveness of human-robot collaborative system architecture for various applications.