Comparative Study of a Manual and Voice-Assisted Collaborative Robot Workforce in Production Assembly Lines

The world is moving from a manual workforce to a collaborative workforce in industrial production systems where humans and robots work together making the manufacturing process harmonious. Humans consist of characteristics like flexibility, adaptability, decision-making skills, and creativity while strength, endurance, speed, and accuracy are from robots. A combined workforce of a human and a robot provides more efficiency, flexibility, and increment in production. This paper compares a manual assembly and a collaborative assembly of ten flange assemblies. The assembly defined here is the joining of a circular cover plate and a flange using four bolts and nuts. A voice-assisted system is incorporated into the collaborative robot which picks the necessary assembly parts when prompted thus boosting the performance. The study begins by completing ten flange assemblies by a single person and noting the outcomes after completion of assembly. The time taken and the elemental motions are the parameters evaluated. The Theory of Therbligs is used for studying the elemental motion in the combined production system. This theory consists of eighteen elemental motions that are used mainly in the industrial workforce. The completion of the initial procedure is followed by doing the same tasks with the help of a robot. The operator and the robot work collaboratively in a combined production system to complete the same flange assemblies and the outcomes are noted and compared.