Improving Welding Robotization via Operator Skill Identification, Modeling, and Human-Machine Collaboration: Experimental Protocol Implementation

Abstract: The industry of the future, also known as Industry 5.0, aims to modernize production tools, digitize workshops, and cultivate the invaluable human capital within the company. Industry 5.0 can't be done without fostering a workforce that is not only technologically adept but also has enhanced skills and knowledge. Specifically, collaborative robotics plays a key role in automating strenuous or repetitive tasks, enabling human cognitive functions to contribute to quality and innovation. In manual manufacturing, however, some of these tasks remain challenging to automate without sacrificing quality. In certain situations, these tasks require operators to dynamically organize their mental, perceptual, and gestural activities. In other words, skills that are not yet adequately explained and digitally modeled to allow a machine in an industrial context to reproduce them, even in an approximate manner. Some tasks in welding serve as a perfect example. Drawing from the knowledge of cognitive and developmental psychology, professional didactics, and collaborative robotics research, our work aims to find a way to digitally model manual manufacturing skills to enhance the automation of tasks that are still challenging to robotize. Using welding as an example, we seek to develop, test, and deploy a methodology transferable to other domains. The purpose of this article is to present the experimental setup used to achieve these objectives.