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CPROSA-Holarchy: An Enhanced PROSA Model to Enable Worker-Cobot Agile Manufacturing

Ahmed R. Sadik and Bodo Urban
Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphic Research-IGD, Rostock 18059, Germany University of Rostock, Rostock 18057, Germany

Abstract—This research is combining two important concepts of the intelligent manufacturing. The first concept is the agile manufacturing and the second is the collaborative robotics. On the one hand, agility in manufacturing is the capability of the industrial enterprise to respond rapidly and effectively to the unanticipated changes occur in the production. The aim of the agile manufacturing is to proactively develop solutions to adapt with the customer needs. These solutions are a result of a collective decision making that has been formed among the different entities of the agile manufacturing system. On the other hand, collaborative robotics is a new trend in industrial robotics which involves a collaborative robot (cobot). A cobot is usually an industrial robot designed to operate safely in a shared work environment with the human worker. This in contrast with the conventional industrial robot which operates in isolation from the worker workspace. One of the biggest advantages of the collaborative robotics is to increase the agility of the manufacturing. Therefore, in this research we focus on developing the proper information control and communication solution to facilitate the worker-cobot agile manufacturing. Furthermore, we introduce a case-study of two workers in cooperation with one cobot to demonstrate the solution concept.

Index Terms—Agile Manufacturing, Collaborative Robotics, Holonic Control Architecture, Ontology Based Communication, Autonomous Reactive Agent, Multi-Agent System

Cite: Ahmed R. Sadik and Bodo Urban, "CPROSA-Holarchy: An Enhanced PROSA Model to Enable Worker-Cobot Agile Manufacturing," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 296-304, May 2018. DOI: 10.18178/ijmerr.7.3.296-304