Transforming Factories Through Human Machine Collaboration

Abstract

The concept of automation, during much of the industrial age, has been that of automation as a replacement for humans – machines which would take up tasks from workers that were either monotonous, physically tough, or dangerous to them. This conception of automation is slowly being replaced by a more sophisticated one, wherein human-machine cooperation is seen as the norm, where robots, intelligent machines, and workers work alongside each other doing what they do best (Figure 1).