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Human-Cobot collaboration's impact on success, time completion, errors, workload, gestures and acceptability during an assembly task

Étienne Fournier, Christine Jeoffrion, Belal Hmedan, Damien Pellier, Humbert Fiorino, Aurélie Landry

TL;DR

This study examines how human/cobot collaboration (H/C) versus human/human collaboration (H/H) affects performance, mental workload, gesture usage, and acceptability in simple and complex assembly tasks. Using a randomized design with 120 adults and metrics including NASA-TLX, video-coded gestures, errors, time, and a UTAUT2-based acceptability questionnaire, the authors show that cobots reduce the impact of task difficulty on workload and improve task success, but increase completion time and gesture frequency due to error correction and occasional bugs. Acceptability is higher for H/C, particularly in ease of use and perceived enjoyment, with prior exposure further boosting acceptance, while cobot adaptation to dominant hand shows no significant effect. These findings provide practical guidance for Industry 5.0 cobot deployment, highlighting trade-offs between speed, quality, and operator experience and underscoring the need for further work on situated acceptance and diverse operator samples.

Abstract

The 5.0 industry promotes collaborative robots (cobots). This research studies the impacts of cobot collaboration using an experimental setup. 120 participants realized a simple and a complex assembly task. 50% collaborated with another human (H/H) and 50% with a cobot (H/C). The workload and the acceptability of the cobotic collaboration were measured. Working with a cobot decreases the effect of the task complexity on the human workload and on the output quality. However, it increases the time completion and the number of gestures (while decreasing their frequency). The H/C couples have a higher chance of success but they take more time and more gestures to realize the task. The results of this research could help developers and stakeholders to understand the impacts of implementing a cobot in production chains.

Human-Cobot collaboration's impact on success, time completion, errors, workload, gestures and acceptability during an assembly task

TL;DR

This study examines how human/cobot collaboration (H/C) versus human/human collaboration (H/H) affects performance, mental workload, gesture usage, and acceptability in simple and complex assembly tasks. Using a randomized design with 120 adults and metrics including NASA-TLX, video-coded gestures, errors, time, and a UTAUT2-based acceptability questionnaire, the authors show that cobots reduce the impact of task difficulty on workload and improve task success, but increase completion time and gesture frequency due to error correction and occasional bugs. Acceptability is higher for H/C, particularly in ease of use and perceived enjoyment, with prior exposure further boosting acceptance, while cobot adaptation to dominant hand shows no significant effect. These findings provide practical guidance for Industry 5.0 cobot deployment, highlighting trade-offs between speed, quality, and operator experience and underscoring the need for further work on situated acceptance and diverse operator samples.

Abstract

The 5.0 industry promotes collaborative robots (cobots). This research studies the impacts of cobot collaboration using an experimental setup. 120 participants realized a simple and a complex assembly task. 50% collaborated with another human (H/H) and 50% with a cobot (H/C). The workload and the acceptability of the cobotic collaboration were measured. Working with a cobot decreases the effect of the task complexity on the human workload and on the output quality. However, it increases the time completion and the number of gestures (while decreasing their frequency). The H/C couples have a higher chance of success but they take more time and more gestures to realize the task. The results of this research could help developers and stakeholders to understand the impacts of implementing a cobot in production chains.
Paper Structure (15 sections, 10 figures, 2 tables)

This paper contains 15 sections, 10 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Material and methods
  3. Participants
  4. Procedure
  5. Results
  6. Questionnaires validity
  7. The moderative effect of the task demand (Hypothesis 1)
  8. H2: The moderation effect of cobot's adaptation to the type dominant hand
  9. H3: The effect of the type of collaboration
  10. H4: The cobotic collaboration acceptability score
  11. Discussion
  12. Conclusion
  13. Conflict of interest
  14. Funding
  15. References

Figures (10)

  • Figure 1: Illustration of the experimental procedure
  • Figure 2: A participant realizing the task with YuMi (H/C condition)
  • Figure 3: Two participants realizing the task (H/H condition)
  • Figure 4: Bar chart of the workload, success, errors, time completion and gestures in the simple and complex tasks during the collaboration human/human compared to human/cobot
  • Figure 5: Interaction effect of the type of collaboration on the effect of task complexity on workload
  • ...and 5 more figures