Laminator trust in human–robot collaboration for manufacturing fibre‐reinforced composites

Fibre‐reinforced composites manufacturing is a large and growing industry, with much of the work carried out manually by skilled human laminators. The physical nature of the work can be significantly deleterious to these workers' health, while growing demand requires increased rates of manufacture. Human–robot collaborative manufacturing offers a potential solution but requires the human to feel confident working with the robot and trust that they will be safe. Successful human trials of two different approaches to collaborative lay‐up of fibre‐reinforced plastic composites are presented, with tasks representative of manufacturing challenges in industry. Volunteer responses are measured by questionnaires, with users reporting the processes to be safe, simple to use and allowing greater ease of manufacturing than manual‐only lay‐up. Lay‐up of fibre‐reinforced plastic composites is a highly skilled task which poses ergonomic difficulties for laminators. This work presents trials of two representative human–robot collaborative lay‐up processes where human and robot work simultaneously in the same workspace, with both methods reported by the human laminators to be safe, simple to use and making lay‐up ‘easier’. Human and robot can work together to deliver precise, high‐quality composite lay‐up.