Anthropocentric Approach for Smart Assembly: Integration and Collaboration

Recently, anthropocentric or human-centric approaches renewed its importance in smart manufacturing especially for assembly applications where human dexterity and informal knowledge are dispensable at present and in the near future. This paper analyzes the integration, design, and collaboration issues regarding anthropocentric researches in the past few years mainly in assembly domain. First of all, towards closed-loop system integration, the researches on integrating human in the cyber-physical system are elaborated and summarized. Then, human-centric designs (HCD) especially in shop-floor assembly field are analyzed. To emphasize human-robot hybrid assembly, several related issues including collaboration paradigm, task planning and assignment, interaction interfaces, and safety are discussed. At last, a survey on human cognitive and social limitation management is elaborated. Related research challenges and directions are discussed.