Comparing quality profiles in Human-Robot Collaboration: empirical evidence in the automotive sector

Purpose: Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) is a paradigm that is gradually consolidating in the industrial field. The goal of this paradigm is to combine human and robot skills to make production more flexible. An effective implementation of HRC requires a careful analysis of its different aspects, related to both robots and humans. For this reason, the development of a tool able to consider all HRC aspects to evaluate the collaboration quality is a real practical need. Design/methodology/approach: In a previous work, Gervasi et al. (2020) proposed a multidimensional framework to evaluate HRC quality. This framework has been tested on a real industrial HRC application in the automotive sector. Two different alternatives of the same assembly task were analyzed and compared on the quality reference framework. Findings: The comparison between the two alternatives of the same assembly task highlighted the framework's ability to detect the effects of different configurations on the various HRC dimensions. This ability can be useful in decision making processes and in improving the collaboration quality. Social implications: The framework considers the human aspects related to the interaction with robots, allowing to effectively monitor and improve the collaboration quality and operator satisfaction. Originality/value: This paper extends and shows the use of the HRC evaluation framework proposed by Gervasi et al. (2020) on real industrial applications. In addition, an HRC application implemented in an important automotive company is described and analyzed in detail.