Enhancing Trust in Collaborative Assembly Through Resilient Adversarial Reinforcement Learning

Collaborative robots, or cobots, are designed to improve productivity and safety in industrial settings. However, effective Human–Robot Collaboration (HRC) relies heavily on the human operator’s trust in the robotic partner. This study posits that trust is significantly enhanced by the robot’s ability to adapt to unpredictable human behavior. To achieve this adaptability, we propose applying an Adversarial Reinforcement Learning (ARL) framework to the robot’s activity planning. We model the assembly process as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) on a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). The robot learns an assembly policy using an on-policy algorithm while a simulated human agent, trained with the same algorithm, acts as an adversary that introduces disturbances and delays. We applied the proposed approach to a simple industrial case study and evaluated it on complex assembly sequences generated synthetically. Although the ARL-trained robot did not outperform conventional assembly optimization algorithms in terms of task completion time, it guaranteed robustness against human variability. This ensured task completion within a bounded timeframe regardless of human actions. By demonstrating consistent performance and adaptability in the face of uncertainty, the robot exhibits the Ability and Benevolence components of the ABI model of trust. This fosters a more resilient and trustworthy collaborative environment.