Expert opinion aggregation-based decision support for human-robot collaboration digital twin maturity assessment

Human-centered smart manufacturing is an essential direction for the future development of manufacturing. Safe and reliable smart human-robot collaboration is the foundation for realizing human-centered smart manufacturing. Digital twin-based human-robot collaboration has been proposed as a new manufacturing paradigm to devise collaborative strategies, simulate collaborative processes, and ensure worker safety. Establishing a maturity model is essential to accurately assess the capabilities of the constructed human-robot collaboration digital twin. This paper aims to contribute to the formalization and standardization of the human-robot collaboration digital twin. It constructs a novel assessment framework for the overall maturity measurement of existing digital twin-based human-robot collaboration projects. The developed human-robot collaboration digital twin maturity model includes 5 evaluation dimensions and 24 evaluation factors. Additionally, 5 maturity levels and their definitions are defined for each evaluation factor for maturity scoring. The expert opinion aggregation approach is proposed to quantify the evaluation factor metrics and ultimately to obtain a maturity level for the human-robot collaboration digital twin. The effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method are verified through a collaborative assembly case study. This paper provides a generic method for assessing the competency level of human-robot collaboration digital twins, which can provide insights into the maturity of digital twins for practitioners in the human-robot collaboration field to develop targeted strategies for optimizing and upgrading human-robot collaboration digital twins.