Authors - S. M. Mizanoor Rahman Abstract - We developed a human-robot collaborative system in the form of a hybrid cell to perform a collaborative assembly task in a flexible manufacturing setup. We conducted an experiment where 20 human subjects separately performed the assembly task in collaboration with the robot. We observed the collaborative assembly task, reviewed related state-of-the-art research results, interviewed the subjects, relevant researchers and industry experts and thus derived a comprehensive set of assessment and benchmark metrics and methodologies for the collaborative manipulation (co-manipulation) task. The metrics included the core requirements of the task expressed as the key performance indicators (KPI) and the effectiveness of physical interactions between a human collaborator and the robot for the task. The proposed benchmark metrics and methods can help assess and benchmark the overall performance and interactional effectiveness of human-robot collaborative manipulation tasks and systems for various applications such as manufacturing and assembly, logistics and transport, military operations, construction, disaster operations, etc.
