The Importance of Cobot Speed and Acceleration on the Manufacturing System Efficiency

Abstract

In recent years, collaborative workplaces (human-robot collaboration) have become much more present in manufacturing systems. Although the introduction of collaborative workplaces is cost, time, and socially responsible, there is still great uncertainty about how the different speeds and accelerations of collaborative robots (cobots) affect human and manufacturing system efficiency. The paper shows the importance of evaluating and studying the characteristics of individual collaborative workstations to achieve an optimized manufacturing system. Two different simulation modeling methods were used to evaluate different speeds and accelerations of the robot on the quantity of parts to be manufactured and flow time of the collaborative workplace. The simulation modeling methodology of the simulation scenarios was used to evaluate each variation of speed and acceleration in detail. The main results are comparisons between the simulation modeling results and a study of a real collaborative workplace with graphically and numerically presented parameters describing the product flow time (normative time of the assembly operation) and the product quantity. The research confirms the importance of the individual evaluation of the introduction of a collaborative workplace in an existing or newly proposed manufacturing system. From the presented results optimizing the speed and acceleration of the robot is critical to achieving an optimized, efficient manufacturing system from a human perspective as well.