Improving safety in human–robot collaboration towards sustainable production in Industry 5.0

Abstract

The widespread implementation of Human–Robot Collaborations (HRC) in industry is becoming an obvious step in the era of Industry 4.0 or even 5.0 and the requirements of sustainable production (SP) due to the increase in productivity and quality while reducing production costs. However, due to limited studies on the establishment of collision thresholds in HRC, in-depth research is needed to determine possible disruptions for safety in HRC. So, firstly, in order to identify current issues and critical challenges in the field of HRC safety, an analysis of the literature was carried out using the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) & Mapping in Literature Reviews (MLR) methodology based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines (PRISMA). A total of 4,107 research articles were identified in Science Direct—Elsevier, Web of Science and Springer, that focussed on safety in HRC in SP. In this study, 103 items were then analysed and 53 in the second stage. The key research contributions are developed as the principles for enhancing safety in HRC in industry: (1) improving HRC workspace safety, (2) building mechanisms for monitoring HRC workspaces and (3) managing ethical issues. In line with these trends, secondly, experimental studies were provided. Next, empirical research was conducted to establish the parameters for ensuring the safety of the monitoring system for work in HRC. Therefore, analysis of the video recordings on the efficiency of detecting collision in HRC, when using the Region-Based Convolutional Neural Network (YOLOv8 Tiny), within the vision system were researched. The experimental studies indicate the necessary actions within a monitoring system in HRC in order to ensure workplace safety in the HRC environment. Finally, the research results suggest future research directions as (1) proactive HRC with attention to collaborative robots and (2) integration with the approach, to ensure safety in HRC into SP strategy in industry. This study provides new insights into HRC and gives an outlook for development of safety issues in HRC in industry.