Achieving productivity and operator well-being: a dynamic task allocation strategy for collaborative assembly systems in Industry 5.0

Collaborative robots, or cobots, offer a unique combination of productivity and flexibility that has led to significant growth in adoption over the past decade. Moreover, recently, there has been a shift towards a human-centered design of the workspace, known as one of the drivers of Industry 5.0, which prioritizes the well-being of operators. To achieve this, various human factors such as ergonomics, mental workload, personal skills, and capabilities need to be considered in the workspace design, and their impact on system productivity must be evaluated. The integration of a human and a cobot in the same workplace can affect the performance of the human operator, as the perception of the cobot can impact their work. This highlights the importance of taking human factors into account, as a lack of consideration in these aspects has contributed to the failure of many implementations. To link the objectives of productivity, flexibility, and human factors consideration, a dynamic real-tim...