Mental stress and safety awareness during human-robot collaboration - Review

Human-robot collaboration (HRC) is an emerging research area that has gained tremendous attention in both academia and industry. Yet, the feature that humans and robots sharing the workplace has led to safety concerns. In particular, the mental stress or safety awareness of human teammates during HRC remains unclear but is also of great importance to workplace safety. In this manuscript, we reviewed twenty-five studies for understanding the relationships between HRC and workers' mental stress or safety awareness. Specifically, we aimed to understand: (1) robot-related factors that may affect human workers' mental stress or safety awareness, (2) a number of measurements that could be used to evaluate workers' mental stress in HRC, and (3) various methods for measuring safety awareness that had been adopted or could be applied in HRC. According to our literature review, robot-related factors including robot characteristics, social touching and trajectory have relationships with workers' mental stress or safety awareness. For the measurement of mental stress and safety awareness, each method mentioned has its validity and rationality. Additionally, a discussion related to the potential co-robot actions to lower mental stress or improve safety awareness as well as future implications were provided.