Towards Industry 5.0: the Role of Augmented Reality and Cobot Assistance Technologies in the Realisation of Human-Centric Manufacturing

Although Industry 4.0 has brought multiple positive impacts, a lack of consideration for human operators' needs has been a main driver of the 'Industry 5.0' vision, which has as core pillar the human-centric manufacturing. As a result of the vision and prior trends in academic research toward human-centric manufacturing, new technologies and methods have emerged for operator assistance and integration in a factory's cyber-physical system. A subset of the academic literature highlights the need for methods to monitor and analyse human operators’ cognitive and physical ergonomic factors to enable robust human-centric processes and systems’ design. In addition, new technologies such as collaborative robots (cobots) and immersive technologies (augemented, virtual and mixed reality) offer prominent capabilities to embed human operators’ factors in a factory's digitised system. Such a step is critical to help unleash the potential of technological advances for industries and the workforce, by advancing concepts such as the 'Operator 4.0', improving technology acceptance, promoting more equitable and inclusive workplaces and, ultimately, improve competitive advantage. This paper carries out a systematic review on human-centric manufacturing and discusses the latest technologies, methods and approaches that are contributing to the next industrial revolution. Specific research topics and research gaps are discussed and future research directions are provided.