Task Oriented Collaborative Robots: Intervention in Repetitive Task for Worker Well-Being

This study investigates the role of Task-Oriented Collaborative Robots in repetitive tasks, specifically focusing on enhancing worker well-being. A comprehensive dataset capturing key human ergonomic factors of fatigue, mood, and motivation across 150 builds of a furniture assembly task was developed. Utilising the precision of ZED2 RGB-D camera, three hours of visual data per 6 participants enabled monitoring of upper body movements. Each build sample is complemented by self-reported questionnaires on psychological states of mental fatigue (MF), mood, and motivation. The key findings reveal significant variations in fatigue levels, mood, and motivation and their correlation with task performance, measured by average task completion time. Notably, gender-based disparities in reporting MF and total completion time were observed. A key proposal to integrate verbal alerts with collaborative robots (cobots) such as UR5 emerges from this study. These findings underscore the potential of cobots in mitigating worker fatigue and improving task efficiency to revolutionize worker well-being and productivity in repetitive industrial tasks.