Survey of Human-Robot Collaboration in Industrial Settings: Awareness, Intelligence, and Compliance

Industrial robots working in isolation in a highly automated system are valued for their high productivity. The shortcomings of these pure robotic cells become more apparent when flexibility in production is required to respond to varying production volumes and customized product demands. Complete automation is highly productive, but it is costly to set up and difficult to change. On the other hand, manual production, although flexible, is slower and prone to human errors. Hence, in industry, smarter automation methods that leverage the dexterity, flexibility, and decision-making capability of a human to speed, precision, and power of a robot are required. In industry, the need for flexibility in production has resulted in the acceptance of human-robot collaboration (HRC) as a viable alternative. The objective of this survey is to address the main challenges in HRC (safety, trust-in-automation, and productivity), safety measures, types of HRC, technical standards, and conceptual categorization of HRC: awareness, intelligence, and compliance.