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Call for Papers for a Special Issue on "Human-Robot Collaboration for Futuristic
Human-Centric Smart Manufacturing"

Poster · October 2022

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 Call for Papers for a Special Issue on
Human-Robot Collaboration for Futuristic Human-
Centric Smart Manufacturing
Transactions of the ASME
Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering

Introduction to the Special Issue

In line with the human-centric concerns of Industry 5.0 [1], modern factories are striving for an ever-higher degree of
flexible and resilient manufacturing in mass personalization [2] with increasing complicatedness and complexity [3].
To achieve it, human-robot collaboration (HRC) becomes a prevailing strategy, which combines high accuracy,
strength, and repeatability of industrial robots with high flexibility and adaptability of human operators to realize
overall optimal productivity [4]. Nevertheless, existing HRC development mainly undertakes either human-centered
or robot-centered manner reactively (i.e. slave/master model), by following the pre-defined instructions, which is far
from efficient integration of robotic automation and human cognitions for effective collaborations [5].

Recent research on human-level information processing of cognitive computing [6], mixed reality/metaverse [7], the
industrial IoT [8], and advanced data analytics [9] creates the potentials to bridge the gap of knowledge distilling and
information sharing between onsite operators, robots and the manufacturing system with mutual cognitions. In this
context, a foreseeable HRC-empowered human-centric smart manufacturing paradigm characterized by high-level
teamwork skills is emerging, of which several aspects should be addressed [10]: 1) Inter-collaboration cognition. The
human operator can obtain continuous changes and updates of robots, such as to represent status and working
conditions. Synchronously, semantic knowledge understanding from the human’s motions, activities to his/her
intention can be learned by the robot for concurrent cognition. 2) Spatio-temporal interaction prediction. Spatio-
temporal behavior of a human and a robot in HRC consists of their dynamic structure of these two entities and their
interaction with the coexisting neighbors. The access of predictability of the future execution between these entities
can facilitate intra-collaboration intelligence for decision-making and path planning, such as proactive assistance
either from a human to a robot or from a robot to a human. 3) Proactive teamwork. Models of various decentralized
HRC systems in different workshops can converge a wider applicable knowledge representation, which can make a
long-range allocation of manufacturing activities for both humans and robots based on their skilled abilities, to
achieving self-organization.

To this end, as an emerging and promising research topic, this Special Issue aims to present the state-of-the-art
methodologies, tools, systems, and cases to enable the readiness and realization of HRC for futuristic human-centric
smart manufacturing [11].

Topics of Interest
The topics relevant to this special issue include but are not limited to:
• Cognitive Human-Robot Collaboration Systems
• MR/Metaverse-assisted Human-Robot Collaboration
• Intuitive safety concerns in Human-Robot Collaboration
• Multi-modal Intelligence for Human-Robot Collaboration
• Adaptive motion planning in Human-Robot Collaboration
• Human intention prediction in Human-Robot Collaboration
• Semantic Knowledge Representation for Human-Robot Collaboration
• Human-Robot Collaboration cases, systems, and implementations in manufacturing
All the topics listed above have specific focus on manufacturing science and their practical applications.
Proposed Timeline
Call for Papers: 01 July 2022 (Submission Portal Open)
Manuscript Submission Due: 30 October 2022
First Decision to Authors: 31 January 2023
Further Reviews and Decision: 31 May 2023

Guest Editors
• Dr. Pai Zheng, Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, The Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.
Email: pai.zheng@polyu.edu.hk
• Prof. Jinsong Bao, Professor, School of Mechanical Engineering, Donghua University, China.
Email: bao@dhu.edu.cn
• Dr. Tao Peng, Associate Professor, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, China.
Email: tao_peng@zju.edu.cn
• Dr. Xi Vincent Wang, Associate Professor, Department of Production Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of
Technology, Stockholm 110 44, Sweden.
Email: wangxi@kth.se
• Prof. Lihui Wang, Professor, Department of Production Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm 110 44, Sweden.
Email: lihuiw@kth.se
• Prof. Aydin Nassehi, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bristol, UK.
Email: aydin.nassehi@bristol.ac.uk

References
[1] Xu, X., Lu, Y., Vogel-Heuser, B., Wang, L. Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0—Inception, conception and
perception. J. Manuf. Syst., (2021), 61, 530-535.
[2] P. Zheng, L. Xia, C. Li, X. Li, B. Liu. Towards Self-X cognitive manufacturing network: An industrial
knowledge graph-based multi-agent reinforcement learning approach. J. Manuf. Syst. (2021), 61, 16-26.
[3] Ma, A., Nassehi, A. and Snider, C., 2019. Embracing complicatedness and complexity with Anarchic
Manufacturing. Procedia Manufacturing, 28, pp.51-56.
[4] L. Wang, S. Liu, H. Liu, X.V. Wang, Overview of Human-Robot Collaboration in Manufacturing, Springer
International Publishing, 2020.
[5] S. Liu, L. Wang, X.V. Wang, Symbiotic human-robot collaboration: multimodal control using function
blocks, Procedia CIRP. 93 (2020) 1188–1193. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2020.03.022.
[6] J. Zhang, H. Liu, Q. Chang, L. Wang, R.X. Gao, Recurrent neural network for motion trajectory prediction
in human-robot collaborative assembly, CIRP Ann. 69 (2020) 9–12.
[7] S. Li, P. Zheng, J. Fan, L. Wang. Towards Proactive Human-Robot Collaborative Assembly: A Multimodal
Transfer Learning-Enabled Approach. IEEE Trans. on Ind.l Electro. (2021).
[8] W. Xu, J. Cui, L. Li, B. Yao, S. Tian, Z. Zhou, Digital twin-based industrial cloud robotics: Framework,
control approach and implementation, J. Manuf. Syst. (2020) 0–1.
[9] A. Kumar, A. Jaiswal, A Deep Swarm-Optimized Model for Leveraging Industrial Data Analytics in
Cognitive Manufacturing, IEEE Trans. Ind. Informatics. 17 (2021) 2938–2946.
[10] S. Li, R. Wang, P. Zheng, L. Wang. Towards proactive human–robot collaboration: A foreseeable cognitive
manufacturing paradigm. J. Manuf. Syst. (2021), 60, 547-552.
[11] L. Wang. A futuristic perspective on human-centric assembly. J. Manuf. Syst., (2022), 62, 199-201.

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