Chapter 9 - Case studies of proactive human–robot collaboration in manufacturing

In accordance with the human-centric, sustainable, and resilient principles outlined in Industry 5.0, Proactive HRC presents wide-ranging applications across various industries, including machining, assembly, welding, and more. Proactive HRC establishes a collaborative system, allowing robots to execute high-load and high-risk operations, while humans perform ultra-flexible tasks. Through this approach, Proactive HRC optimizes processing steps, enhances information systems, and refines human manual labor. This chapter presents two case studies of Proactive HRC in manufacturing. The first case focuses on the disassembly of aging electric vehicle batteries. We provide relevant algorithms and system demonstration of disassembly work as a reference for those interested in this field. In the context of human–robot collaborative drilling, research is still in the exploratory stage with preliminary results. We propose a conceptual system and discuss the enabling technologies to elaborate our insights and future expectations for the potential collaborative drilling system aircraft skin.