Human modeling and interaction in cyber-physical systems: A reference framework

Abstract This study focuses on the question of how humans can be inherently integrated into cyber-physical systems (CPS) to reinforce their involvement in the increasingly automated industrial processes. After a use-case oriented review of the related research literature, a human-integration framework and associated data models are presented as part of a multi-agent IoT middleware called CHARIOT. The framework enables human actors to be semantically represented and registered, together with other IoT entities, in a common service directory, thereby facilitating their inclusion in complex service chains. To validate and evaluate the proposed framework, a user study is conducted on a setup where a human and a robot arm collaborate on a “pick-assemble-place” job on a conveyor belt. Based on the human skill set parameters obtained from the user study, online and offline variants of task assignment on the conveyor belt setup are implemented and analyzed over the presented framework. The results illustrate possible efficiency gains through the consolidated online monitoring and control of all cyber-physical system entities, including human actors.