Design Factors: Integrated Design of Collaborative Robots, Products, and Manufacturing Environment
PhD Researcher: Fikre Gebremeskel
Primary Supervisor: Dr Matthias Guertler
Collaborative robots (cobots) are transforming the manufacturing industry by enabling automation and collaboration between humans and robots. However, integrating cobots into existing manufacturing workplaces often comes with its own set of complexities that require comprehensive system design. The project aims to support manufacturing companies in adopting cobots by analysing the interdependencies among various sociotechnical factors associated with humans, cobots, products, workspaces, and other aspects of the manufacturing environment.
Currently, the project is in the research clarification phase, and a systematic literature review is underway to analyse the factors that influence cobot adoption and the available support for implementing them. The identified factors are being mapped across the aforementioned human-robot collaborative manufacturing domains while also identifying gaps in existing methods. By the end of the literature review, we will determine the key success factors for cobot adoption and provide justification for our proposed method.
In the future, our plans involve conducting interviews with representatives from manufacturing companies to gather insights on cobot adoption issues. We will also develop guidelines for cobot adoption and evaluate and validate these guidelines in both laboratory and industry settings.