Benchmarking Teamwork of Humans and Cobots—An Overview of Metrics, Strategies, and Tasks

Abstract

Human-robot teaming receives an ever-increasing level of attention in research, development and industry. Novel approaches to task sharing in hybrid teams range from optimized schedules to intelligent cobot assistants with a high degree of autonomy. These approaches must prove their usefulness and benefits compared to manual work or full automation – particularly when it comes to assessing their potential for productive industrial use. This leverages demand for standardized, repeatable benchmarks to compare approaches and measure improvements in a reproducible way. Designing such benchmarks is challenging as numerous aspects, from safety considerations to human factors and team performance, must be considered. This survey seeks to contribute to the future development of benchmarks for the field of collaborative assembly, handling, and industrial cobot applications by giving a comprehensive overview of relevant metrics, evaluation strategies, and tasks for human-robot teams.