From Cobots to Human-Robot Synergy - Overview and Future Trends

In cooperative operation, humans and robot systems must play out their respective strengths optimally, diversifying the capabilities of industrial and service robots compared to their autonomous operations. With consolidated knowledge and the appropriate hardware, future robotic systems will undergo a major evolution to meet the increased requirements for executing manufacturing tasks in human-centered complex production ecosystems, as well as to provide care-based services in everyday life. This will open new possibilities to harness the potentials of robots, together with the indispensable flexibility of the operator in the service and process value chains while addressing a radically innovative interpretation of Human-robot collaboration (HRC) dynamics.

Next-generation collaborative robots (cobots) will be designed with enhanced dexterity and advanced mechatronic features. They will be equipped with heterogeneous sensors to enrich and update knowledge about the context together with all the key actors operating in it while adapting exogenous and endogenous unforeseen events. For the relevant contact points between humans and robots in an application, it is usually not the moving mass, but rather the speed, and the detection and reaction times of the robot system that are determining factors for the limit of safe operation, together with the ability to efficiently adapt the dynamics. Robot manufacturers often offer freely configurable safety controls, with which different work and speed ranges can be safeguarded for the operator/user - e.g. different functions for the safety-related monitoring of axes, or operation speeds, thus allowing the development of HRC applications for specific processes in industrial and service value chains.

Several research topics of strategic importance will result from this initiative, including:

• Cobot design and engineering, towards developing new advanced prototypes
• Human-robot collaboration (HRC)
• Humanoids with intuitive intelligence
• Industrial cobots and mobile platforms designed to go beyond inspection
• Cobot dynamics
• Human-cobot synergy and cooperation (Including the disruptive aspect)
• Unlocking new application areas by expanding cobot capabilities
• Enhanced context-aware frameworks and sensor infrastructures (also general aspects regarding sensors for cobots/HRC)
• Deliberative intelligence in cobots
• Social sciences, such as new GUIs, interaction patterns and methods along with cooperation dynamics
• Control concepts for HRC
• Safety concepts for cobot interaction (simulation, collision detection and prevention, specific safety measures)
• Digital twins for HRC / cobots (with AR)
• Economic/commercial consideration for HRC / cobot scenarios

These research topics can be addressed by the invited authors in papers addressing disruptive scientific challenges, empirical studies together with literature review works. The authors should provide a sound motivation of the expected social and industrial impact.