Application, Development and Future Opportunities of Collaborative Robots (Cobots) in Manufacturing: A Literature Review

The rapid development of robot technology has introduced a substantial impact on manufacturing. Numerous studies have been carried out to apply collaborative robots (cobots) to address manufacturing productivity and ergonomics issues, which has brought extensive opportunities. In this context, a systematic literature search in the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases was carried out by electronic and manual search. Thus, 59 relevant contributions out of 4488 studies were analyzed by using preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA). To provide an overview of the different results, studies are summarized according to the following criteria: country, author, year, study design, robot category, results, and future opportunities. The effects of cobots on safety, system design, workplace design, task scheduling, productivity, and ergonomics are discussed to provide a better understanding of the application of cobots in manufacturing. To incentive future research, this paper reviews the development of cobots in manufacturing and discusses future opportunities and directions from cobots and manufacturing system perspectives. This paper provides novel and valuable insights into cobots application and illustrates potential developments of future human-cobot interaction.