Digital twin driven human-robot collaborative assembly

This paper discusses an object-oriented event-driven simulation as a digital twin of a flexible assembly cell coordinated with a robot to perform assembly tasks alongside human. The digital twin extends the use of virtual simulation models developed in the design phase of a production system to operations for real-time control, dynamic skill-based tasks allocation between human and robot, sequencing of tasks and developing robot program accordingly. The methodology combines lean methods of manual assembly in human-robot collaboration paving path towards flexible human-robot work teams. The study is validated with an industrial case study involving dexterous assembly tasks. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of CIRP.