Abstract
Collaborative robotic solutions, where human workers and robots share their skills, are emerging in the industrial context. In order to achieve an appropriate level of Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC), the workstations’ design has to be human-centered and adaptive to the workers’ characteristics/limitations, considering ergonomic criteria. This study corresponds to the first phase of a research project to apply HRC to minimize the musculoskeletal risk associated with a manual assembly task (industrial furniture manufacturing). A new workstation was designed and an ergonomic approach was developed to assess the main risk factors, as well as to optimize the future task allocation between human workers and robots. A questionnaire about working conditions and musculoskeletal symptomology was applied to a selected group of 8 workers. Rapid Upper Limb Assessment and Strain Index were applied (across 38 postures) to assess musculoskeletal risk related to the assembly tasks. In this study, we propose an ergonomic approach to orient the design and task allocation of HRC work systems. This approach allowed the identification of workers’ complaints and risk factors that can be mitigated with future implementations of HRC.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Leso, V., Fontana, L., Iavicoli, I.: The occupational health and safety dimension of Industry 4.0. La Medicina Del Lavoro 109(5), 327–338 (2018)
EFFRA—European Factories of the Future Research Association: Factories 4.0 and Beyond. https://www.effra.eu/sites/default/files/factories40_beyond_v31_public.pdf (2016). Last accessed 2019/08/05
Romero, D., Noran, O., Stahre, J., Bernus, P., Fast-Berglund, Å.: Towards a human-centred reference architecture for next generation balanced automation systems: Human-automation symbiosis. In: Umeda, S., Nakano, M., Mizuyama, H., Hibino, H., Kiritsis, D., von Cieminski, G. (eds.) Advances in Production Management Systems: Innovative Production Management Towards Sustainable Growth, vol. 460, pp. 556–566. Springer, Heidelberg (2015)
Pacaux-Lemoine, M.P., Trentesaux, D., Rey, G.Z., Millot, P.: Designing intelligent manufacturing systems through Human-Machine Cooperation principles: a human-centered approach. Comput. Ind. Eng. 111, 581–595 (2017)
Heydaryan, S., Bedolla, J.S., Belingardi, G.: Safety design and development of a human-robot collaboration assembly process in the automotive industry. Appl. Sci. 8, 2–22 (2018)
Salim, R., Johansson, J.: Automation decisions in investment projects: a study in Swedish wood products industry. Proc. Manuf. 25, 255–262 (2018)
Lindström, V., Winroth, M.: Aligning manufacturing strategy and levels of automation: a case study. J. Eng. Technol. Manage. 27, 148–159 (2010)
Lu, Y.: Industry 4.0: a survey on technologies, applications and open research issues. J. Ind. Inf. Integr. 6, 1–10 (2017)
Bischoff, R., Kurth, J., Schreiber, G., Koeppe, R., Albu-Schäffer, A., Beyer, A., Eiberger, O., Haddadin, S., Stemmer, A., Grunwald, G., Hirzinger, G.: The KUKA-DLR lightweight robot arm—a new reference platform for robotics research and manufacturing. In: Joint 41st International Symposium on Robotics and 6th German Conference on Robotics 2010, ISR/ROBOTIK 2010, vol. 2, pp. 741–48 (2010)
Weiss, A., Huber, A., Minichberger, J., Ikeda, M.: First application of robot teaching in an existing industry 4.0 environment: does it really work? Societies 6(3), 20 (2016)
Mesquita, C., Ribeiro, J., Moreira, P.: Portuguese version of the standardized Nordic musculoskeletal questionnaire: cross cultural and reliability. J. Public Health 18(5), 461–466 (2010)
Ahonen, M., Launis, M., Kuorinka, T.: Ergonomic Workplace Analysis. Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. Ergonomics Section, Helsinki (1989)
Borg, G.: Psychophysical scaling with applications in physical work and the perception of exertion. Scand. J. Work Environ. Health 16(suppl 1), 55–58 (1990)
McAtamney, L., Corlett, E.: RULA: a survey method for the investigation of work-related upper limb disorders. Appl. Ergon. 24(2), 91–99 (1990)
Moore, J.S., Garg, A.: The strain index: a proposed method to analyze jobs for risk of distal upper extremity disorders. Am. Ind. Hyg. Assoc. J. 56(5), 443–458 (1995)
Acknowledgements
NORTE-06-3559-FSE-000018, integrated in the invitation NORTE-59-2018-41, aiming the Hiring of Highly Qualified Human Resources, co-financed by the Regional Operational Programme of the North 2020, thematic area of Competitiveness and Employment, through the European Social Fund (ESF). This work has been also supported by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Colim, A. et al. (2020). Human-Centered Approach for the Design of a Collaborative Robotics Workstation. In: Arezes, P., et al. Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health II. Studies in Systems, Decision and Control, vol 277. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41486-3_41
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41486-3_41
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-41485-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-41486-3
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)