In recent times, the use of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) has increased in many industries. As more AMRs roam the same area, traffic management becomes essential to prevent congestion and deadlocks. In related work, traffic management is often achieved using sophisticated, centralised planning approaches, albeit this often suffers from scalability issues. This paper therefore explores an approach where multi-AMR traffic management is achieved with layered costmaps and a modified Dijkstra's algorithm. This keeps the global path planner in the individual AMRs, thus not suffering scalability issues. To achieve multi-AMR coordination, traffic lanes and restricted areas are added to the AMRs’ global costmaps. Furthermore, the AMRs also use a modified Dijkstra's algorithm that supports implementation of traffic directions. A proof-of-concept solution is implemented in Robot Operating System 2 with Nav2 and Gazebo. The implemented solution was tested against a standard solution without any traffic management in three scenarios designed to provoke collisions. The results indicate that the implemented solution can prevent a set of collisions better than one without traffic management.
The proposal of Industry 5.0 has made sustainability, human-centric and resilience the core of digital manufacturing, which also puts forward new requirements for the human-machine interaction (HMI) paradigm in human-centric smart manufacturing (HCSM). In the manufacturing scenario, the process of HMI can be divided into four parts: 1) Sensors and hardware, where the environment information and input signals are collected, 2) Data processing, where the signals are converted into data, 3) Transmission mechanism, where the data is transmitted to the processing centre, and 4) Interaction and collaboration. Among them, sensors and data are expected to become breakthrough points in optimising HMI. This is not only due to the emergence of new research, innovation and technologies but also because they are closely influenced by the new design concepts brought about by Industry 5.0. This paper analyses the latest studies and technologies in the sensor field and their possible applications in HCSM scenarios. Then, opportunities and challenges of data analysis in the HMI in Industry 5.0 are discussed. Finally, based on the design concepts and requirements of Industry 5.0, this paper demonstrates how they will become the key points for future HMI development.