A Study on Human-Robot Collaboration based Hybrid Assembly System for Flexible Manufacturing

Abstract

Robot technology is one of the key technologies in the 4th industry revolution along with AI (Artificial Intelligent) and IoT (Internet of Things) technology, and robots that can collaborate with humans are drawing attention at industrial sites in particular. If only humans work on manufacturing sites without robots' help, a flexibility that can respond to a variety of variables can be increased, but productivity can be decreased. In the case of fully automated lines without human participation, productivity increases but lacks flexibility. In addition, it is very expensive to produce fully automated facilities that can be used in various product production processes. Therefore, a proper collaboration between humans and robots is a very important factor in ensuring productivity and flexibility. On the other hand, looking at future manufacturing trends, customer requirements for products are expected to be diversified and change rapidly in the future, which requires a flexible diversified small-quantity production environment, in which factories can produce a wide variety of products in a short period of time. In this paper, manufacturing facilities that can support various product production and precision assembly processes through collaboration between humans and robots, have been developed, and the developed facilities have been applied to two testbed lines respectively and functions are verified through actual product production.