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Effect of Human Involvement on Work Performance and Fluency in Human-Robot Collaboration for Recycling

Human-robot collaboration has significant potential in recycling due to the wide variation in the composition of recyclable products. Six participants performed a recyclable item sorting task collaborating with a robot arm equipped with a vision system. The effect of three different levels of human involvement or assistance to the robot (Level 1- occlusion removal; Level 2- optimal spacing; Level 3- optimal grip) on performance metrics such as robot accuracy, task time and subjective fluency were assessed. Results showed that human involvement had a remarkable impact on the robot's accuracy, which increased with human involvement level. Mean accuracy values were 33.3% for Level 1, 69% for Level 2 and 100% for Level 3. The results imply that for sorting processes involving diverse materials that vary in size, shape, and composition, human assistance could improve the robot's accuracy to a significant extent while also being cost-effective.