Human-Cobot collaboration's impact on success, time completion, errors, workload, gestures and acceptability during an assembly task

TL;DR

This study investigates how human-robot collaboration affects task success, time, errors, workload, gestures, and acceptability in assembly tasks, providing insights for industry implementation.

Contribution

It offers experimental evidence on the impacts of cobot collaboration on workload, success rates, and task efficiency during assembly tasks.

Findings

Cobot collaboration reduces workload effects of task complexity.

Cobot collaboration increases completion time and gestures.

Higher success rate in human-cobot pairs despite longer task duration.

Abstract

The 5.0 industry promotes collaborative robots (cobots). This research studies the impacts of cobot collaboration using an experimental setup. 120 participants realized a simple and a complex assembly task. 50% collaborated with another human (H/H) and 50% with a cobot (H/C). The workload and the acceptability of the cobotic collaboration were measured. Working with a cobot decreases the effect of the task complexity on the human workload and on the output quality. However, it increases the time completion and the number of gestures (while decreasing their frequency). The H/C couples have a higher chance of success but they take more time and more gestures to realize the task. The results of this research could help developers and stakeholders to understand the impacts of implementing a cobot in production chains.