Human-Centric Robotic Solution for Motor and Gearbox Assembly: An Industry 5.0 Pilot Study

The automotive industry is one of the most automatized industries, employing more than one million robots worldwide. Although several steps in car production are completely automated, many steps are still carried out by operators, especially in tasks requiring high dexterity. Additionally, customization and deployability are still pending issues in this industry, where a real collaboration between robots and operators would increase the reconfigurability of the assembly lines. This paper presents an innovative robotic cell focused on the motor and gearbox assembly, including collaborative industrial robots and autonomous mobile manipulators along the different assembly stations. The design also incorporates a human-centered approach, with an enhanced human interface to facilitate the interaction with operators with the complete robotic cell. The proposed approach has been deployed and validated on a real automotive industrial scenario, obtaining promising metrics and results.