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Human-industrial robot collaboration (HIRC) creates an opportunity for an ideal combination of human senses and industrial robot efficiency. The strength, endurance and accuracy of industrial robots can be combined with human intelligence and flexibility to create workstations with increased productivity, quality and reduced ergonomic load compared with traditional manual workstations. Even though multiple technical developments of industrial robot and safety systems have taken place over the last decade, solutions facilitating HIRC workstation design are still limited. One element in realising an efficient design of a future workstation is a simulation software. Thus the objective of this research is to (1) develop a demonstrator software that simulates, visualises and evaluates HIRC workstations and (2) propose a design process of how to apply such a simulation software in an industrial context.

The thesis comprises five papers describing the development of a HIRC simulation software and its corresponding design process. Two existing simulation software tools, one for digital human modelling and one for robotic simulation, were merged into one application. Evaluation measures concerning operation time and ergonomic load were included in the common software. Existing engineering design methods were applied in a HIRC workstation context to describe the utilisation of a HIRC simulation software. These developments were demonstrated in five actual industrial cases from a heavy vehicle manufacturing company.

The HIRC simulation software developed enables simulation, visualisation and evaluation of all kinds of HIRC workstations where human and robot simultaneously work in a collaborative environment including hand-guiding tasks. Multiple layout alternatives can be visualised and compared with quantitative numbers of total operation time and biomechanical load on the human body. An integrated HIRC workstation design process describes how such a simulation software can be applied to create suitable workstations. This process also includes a safety measure by which the collision forces between the industrial robot and the human are predicted. These forces have to be minimised to tolerable limits in order to design safe HIRC workstations.

The HIRC simulation software developed and the proposed workstation design process enable more efficient HIRC workstation design. The possibility of designing and evaluating HIRC alternatives for hand-guiding activities is rarely found in other simulation software. The evaluation could include different types of layout alternatives and workstations: HIRC, fully manual or fully automatic. All of these could be compared based on their total operation time and biomechanical load and thus be used in workstation design decision making.