Collaboration Planning by Task Analysis in Human-Robot Collaborative Manufacturing System

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to develop a modeling framework based on task analysis approach to assist human-robot collaboration planning in manufacturing systems. The entire development of this work is illustrated in a modeling development of an actual cable harness assembly in a prototype cellular manufacturing system (Duan et al., 2008). The outline of the paper is arranged as the following: Section 2 provides the literature reviews on human-robot collaboration in manufacturing and the overview of the prototype cellular manufacturing system setup together with the assigned cable harness assembly operation. Section 3 presents entire development of collaboration planning by task analysis including the brief introduction on task analysis approach, task decomposition by hierarchical task analysis, and collaboration analysis. Section 4 discusses the design enhancements by the modeling framework in operation process design and further extension in human skill analysis, safety assessment and operation support. The modeling design is implemented in a prototype production cell to perform model validation and operation performance evaluation as illustrated in Section 5. Section 6 concludes the work and states the suggestions for future work.