The objective of this work is to enhance man-machine collaboration in cell production by task modeling approach. Task modeling provides a method to define and study the collaboration between man and machine. Six requirements have been derived as basis of development. In this work, the task modeling has extended classical HTA method to represent collaborative operation in a hierarchical structure with the classification of operation task levels and extended operation details as task properties. A modeling tool is developed to provide a development and data management platform. The man-machine collaboration is well defined in a structural format by the ability of task analysis method to address human task in a more flexible way. The collaboration modeling and operation resources information have significantly facilitated operation planning in both assembly and control levels. From the case study, the improvement in safety aspect has proven the ability of this approach in assisting safety design and development of production system. The integration with operation control system has shown the execution potential in real-time operation. The unique development of operation data management has expanded this work into operation information support. Through the multimodal information support system, the human operator is well guided by the operation information corresponded to the task components. The operation information also can work as evaluation functions to measure the human working performance and system performance as a whole.

The challenge of this work is to study the design and development of human-robot collaboration (HRC) in cellular manufacturing. Based on the concept of human collaborative design, four main design factors are being identified and developed in an active HRC prototype production cell for cable harness assembly. Human collaborative design aims to optimize the system design for the advantage of collaboration between human and robots based on human considerations. Task modeling approach is developed to study and analyze the task in order to identify the collaboration tasks to develop the collaboration planning. In the collaboration safety development, five safety designs, cover both hardware and control design, are proposed and developed in the prototype system. Risk assessment is conducted to verify the safety design. Two main experiments were conducted as preliminary study to investigate mental workload in HRC. A multimodal information support system is developed in the study of man-machine interface in this work to provide a comprehensive human-robot interface to facilitate human operator. The system performance evaluation had proven the improvement of prototype production cell with HRC design for cellular manufacturing.

The purpose of this work is to conduct human factors studies in the development of an information support system for human-robot collaborative cellular manufacturing system. Multimedia technologies are being utilized to enhance the support system to function as operational information support and interface between human operator and robot system. In the study, five experiments were carried out in both system hardware and support information developments to investigate the human factors design of the support system. In the information display approach study, comparison of information presentation ability among paper manual, LCD TV and projector was conducted. Similar information was displayed in different visual areas by vertical and horizontal LCD TV configurations to study the effect on human visual working area. The comparison experiment on image, text and voice formats had resulted varying modality effectiveness of information. Different information formats require different human cognitive processes even though the information contents are similar. The investigation on multimedia displays in five combinations of information elements was performed in multimedia display design study. The information support system is implemented in a human-robot collaborative prototype production cell. The cable harness assembly experiment had proven the effectiveness of the information support system in guiding the operators on the assembly operation and also to collaborate well with the robot system.