In the last decade, collaborative assembly systems (CAS) are becoming increasingly common due to their ability to merge the flexibility of a manual assembly system with the performance of traditional robotics. Technical constraints, e.g., dedicated tools or resources, or performance requirements, e.g., throughput, could encourage the use of a CAS built around a multi-robot and multi-operator layout, i.e., with a number of resources greater than 2. Starting from the development of a prototype multi-robot multi-operator collaborative workcell, a simulation environment was developed to evaluate the makespan and the degree of collaboration in multi-robot multi-operator CAS. From the simulation environment, a mathematical model was conceptualized. The presented model allows estimating, with a certain degree of accuracy, the performances of the system. The results have investigated how several process characteristics, i.e. the number and type of resources, the resources layout, the task allocation method, and the number of feeding devices, influence the degree of collaboration between the resources. Lastly, the authors propose a compact analytic formulation, based on an exponential function, and define the methods and the influence factors to determine its parameters.

在过去的十年中，协作装配系统（CAS）由于能够将手动装配系统的灵活性与传统机器人技术的性能相结合而变得越来越普遍。技术约束（例如专用工具或资源）或性能要求（例如吞吐量）可能会鼓励使用围绕多机器人和多操作员布局（即，资源数量大于2）构建的CAS。开发原型多机器人多操作员协作工作单元，开发了一个仿真环境以评估多机器人多操作员CAS的制造时间和协作程度。从仿真环境中，数学模型被概念化。所提出的模型允许以一定的准确性来估计系统的性能。结果调查了几个过程特征，即资源的数量和类型，资源的布局，任务分配方法以及馈送设备的数量，如何影响资源之间的协作程度。最后，作者提出了一种基于指数函数的紧凑解析公式，并定义了确定其参数的方法和影响因素。