Analytic evaluation of human-robot system for collaboration in cellular manufacturing system

Abstract

The development in this work is to evaluate analytically human-robot system for collaboration based on performance requirements in cellular manufacturing system. This work continues from a previous task modeling study to further evaluate quantitatively the collaboration planning of the human-robot system. The analysis study is based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. Four criteria (productivity, quality, human fatigue, and safety) are defined as a set of balance performance measurements for a human-centered production system. Pairwise comparison method is used for the calculation of both criteria and alternatives priorities. The evaluations are conducted from the total system and further into task level collaboration task. Comparison of safety criterion focus that changes from total system evaluation to task level evaluation has proven the adaptability of the proposed method to accommodate system requirement changes. The development is working parallel with a case study on an actual cable harness assembly in a cellular manufacturing system. Actual system evaluations were conducted on both manual setup (human system) and collaboration setup (human-robot system) to validate the proposed work.