Digital Twin for Human–Robot Interactions by Means of Industry 4.0 Enabling Technologies

There has been a rapid increase in the use of collaborative robots in manufacturing industries within the context of Industry 4.0 and smart factories. The existing human–robot interactions, simulations, and robot programming methods do not fit into these fast-paced technological advances as they are time-consuming, require engineering expertise, waste a lot of time in programming and the interaction is not trivial for non-expert operators. To tackle these challenges, we propose a digital twin (DT) approach for human–robot interactions (HRIs) in hybrid teams in this paper. We achieved this using Industry 4.0 enabling technologies, such as mixed reality, the Internet of Things, collaborative robots, and artificial intelligence. We present a use case scenario of the proposed method using Microsoft Hololens 2 and KUKA IIWA collaborative robot. The obtained results indicated that it is possible to achieve efficient human–robot interactions using these advanced technologies, even with operators who have not been trained in programming. The proposed method has further benefits, such as real-time simulation in natural environments and flexible system integration to incorporate new devices (e.g., robots or software capabilities).