A Systematic Review of Collaborative Robots in Ergonomics

Collaborative robots are used in various industries, such as manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and education. This study aims to review the ergonomics of using collaborative robots in manufacturing applications. The first step involved metadata extraction from databases such as Harzing’s Publish or Perish, Scopus, and Web of Science. This was done to generate relevant works and authors in the field. The metadata was next analyzed using content analysis methods such as NVivo, VOSViewer, and BibExcel, to highlight key authors and groups of topics. Cluster analysis was applied to the metadata using CiteSpace to obtain citation burst articles. Scite.AI was used to further understand emerging themes. The systematic review identified key research areas, such as the communication modalities and degree of collaboration in human-robot interaction, human-robot cooperation in teamwork theories, and the long-term ergonomic effects of using cobots.