Objective: The status of human-robot collaboration for assembly applications is reviewed and key current challenges for the research community and practitioners are presented. Background: As the pandemic of COVID-19 started to surface the manufacturers went under pressure to address demand challenges. Social distancing measures made fewer people available to work. In such situations, robots were pointed at to support humans to address a shortage in supply. An important activity where humans are needed in a manufacturing value chain is assembly. HRC assembly systems are supposed to safeguard coexisting humans, perform a range of actions, and often need to be reconfigured to handle product variety. This requires them to be resilient and adaptable to various configurations during their operational life. Besides the potential advantages of using robots the challenges of using them in an industrial assembly are enormous. Methods: This mini-review summarizes the challenges of industrial deployment of collaborative robots for assembly applications. Applications: The documented challenges highlight the future research directions in human-robot interaction for industrial applications.

中文翻译：

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机器人和 COVID-19：集成机器人以实现协作自动化的挑战

目标：回顾了装配应用中人机协作的现状，并提出了研究界和从业者当前面临的主要挑战。背景：随着 COVID-19 大流行开始浮出水面，制造商承受着应对需求挑战的压力。社会疏远措施减少了可供工作的人数。在这种情况下，机器人被用来支持人类解决供应短缺问题。制造价值链中需要人类的一项重要活动是组装。HRC 装配系统应该保护共存的人类，执行一系列操作，并且经常需要重新配置以处理产品多样性。这要求它们在使用寿命期间具有弹性并适应各种配置。除了使用机器人的潜在优势之外，在工业装配中使用它们的挑战也是巨大的。方法：这篇小型评论总结了协作机器人在装配应用中的工业部署所面临的挑战。应用：记录在案的挑战突出了工业应用中人机交互的未来研究方向。