ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the results of the conception effort done under Daedalus to transfer the technological results of IEC-61499 into the industrial domain of Human—Robot collaboration, with the aim of deploying the concept of mutualism in next-generation continuously adaptive Human—Machine interactions, where operators and robots mutually complement their physical, intellectual and sensorial capacities to achieve optimized quality of the working environment, while increasing manufacturing performance and flexibility. Personnel costs in Europe are higher compared to other industrial regions; hence, EU industry today competes in the global market by offering high added-value products. In fact, in collaborative tasks, the overall dynamics of the interactions between a robot and a human is currently an emergent property that implicitly arises from their individual behaviours. Advanced human—machine interaction is the most promising approach to enable worker-centric manufacturing in the factory of the future.
