Mechatronic re-design of a manual assembly workstation into a collaborative one for wire harness assemblies

Nowadays, the wire harness assembly process is still manually performed due to the process complexity and product variability (e.g., wires of different kind, size and length). The Wire cobots project, in which this work was conceived, aims at improving the current state-of-art assembly process by introducing in it collaborative robotics. A shared workstation exploiting human abilities and machine strengths was developed to assembly automotive wire harness by means of insulated tape for a real industrial case. In the new workstation, the human deals with the complex task of wire handling, while the robot performs the repetitive and strenuous taping operations. Such a task allocation together with the workstation redesign allow for an improvement of the operator’s well-being in terms of postural conditions and for an increase of the production efficiency. In this paper, the mechanical and mechatronic design, as well as the realization and validation of this new collaborative workstation are presented and discussed.