Supporting tools for operator in robot collaborative mode

Making use of robot automation for customized products put high demand not only on the robot but on the efficiency, simplicity and flexibility to actually deploy and use robots in manufacturing stations and production lines in short batches and low volume production. Hence, market oriented product development and production requires more products to be developed and offered in less time than before, and produced for the market with more customizable options. The role of the operator is in this context an important factor and tools are needed to support the operator for highly efficient and flexible production. In this paper, the development and study of supporting tools for operators is presented. A demonstrator has been built for robotic nailing, screwing and manipulation operation in producing scaled down gable wall elements in wood for a family house. Issues raised to support the operator included automatic programming and generating relevant information for the operator for the deployment procedure to prepare for production. During production, different concepts of safety system to support collaboration mode between the operator and the robot was developed and studied. Wearable devices was used for the operator to access the information generated and different safety configurations were developed and evaluated. The baseline for this work has been to identify industrial use cases which has a clear need for automation as well as collaboration between operator(s) and robot(s). Work scenarios were discussed and analyzed with industrial partners and it was concluded that, in addition to the deployment tools, a smart safety system which is able to detect and react on humans entering the robot system work area is needed. This should support for efficient production and less downtime for both automatic mode and collaboration mode. The benefit of operator robot collaboration is clearly shown as well as the need for supporting tools. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.