Development of advanced cellular manufacturing system with human-robot collaboration

Even if a cellular manufacturing system is robot assisted with assembly support, the main operator is human. A system designer cannot therefore ignore the mental strain experienced by the operator as a result of improper assembly support. In this paper, authors analyzed operators' mental strain induced by physical and informational support in an advanced cellular manufacturing system with human-robot collaboration using physiological parameters related to cognition and emotion. Our results showed that higher speeds of an approaching robot's motion and closer distances between human operator and robot increase mental strain related to emotion, while augmenting text instruction with voice guidance and optical instruction increase mental strain related to cognition and emotion.