Integrating Ontology with Cobot Execution for Human-Robot Collaborative Assembly Using Heterogenous Cobots

The manufacturing industry has heavily relied on robotic automation since the third industrial revolution. However, traditional robots struggle to adapt to the variability of modern production demands. Collaborative robots (cobots) offer a solution by providing flexible automation tailored to personalized manufacturing requirements. Human-robot collaboration (HRC) systems, particularly beneficial for small-scale manufacturing, integrate human capabilities with technological advancements. Cobots enhance productivity, offer ergonomic benefits, and facilitate automation transformation through connectivity and data analytics. Effective communication between resources is crucial for enabling the execution of shared subtasks and ensuring the safety and efficiency of collaborative assembly. This study proposes integrating ontology with cobot execution programs to enhance collaborative assembly operations. The ontology encompasses knowledge related to the products to be assembled, the HRC environment (including resources, tools, and regions), and the relations between these entities and monitoring data. Additionally, establishing a connection between cobot controllers enables the seamless exchange of commands for coordinated execution. By enabling communication between resources, collaborative assembly tasks can be executed either sequentially or simultaneously, monitored for progress, and adjusted as necessary without manual intervention. The proposed approach is applied in the human-robot collaborative mold assembly for cobot execution. The integration of ontology simplifies cobot programming, modifications according to order changes, and facilitates cobot execution control based on monitoring results. This study contributes to streamline cobot execution and decision-making processes in manufacturing environments by incorporating ontology-based knowledge into cobot execution programs.