“Cobots” and manufacturing: A bibliometric study
PUBLICATION DATE: 12 December, 2022 PUBLICATION AUTHOR/S: Hearn, G., Casali, G.L., Channa, N.A.This article provides a bibliometric overview of scholarly work published in collaborative robotics, often known as “Cobots” in recent decades. The first objective of this research is to highlight some of the most relevant research in this emerging research area found in the web of science database. Secondly, we seek to ascertain the relevance of Cobotics research to manufacturing. We hypothesise that Cobotics research may be relevant to manufacturing through three drivers of value: 1) Reduction of production costs, 2) Increasing value differentiation, and 3) New market foci. Then we hypothesise specific mechanisms where Cobots could play a role for each of these three value drivers.
To achieve these objectives, we made a number of classifications including annual scientific production between the years 1997 and 2022, most relevant sources, most relevant authors, most cited affiliations, most cited countries, top word trigrams and unigrams, and word co-occurrence maps.
We also assessed primary focus of the paper with reference to the title. We find that cobotics research is an emerging international research field with a predominant focus on technical and interaction design foundational research. For manufacturing, applied research in managerial issues, production efficiencies through workflow optimisation, as well as safety issues and specific task applications are most common. Research on value differentiation and new market foci through Cobots are lacking or just emerging.
“Cobots” and manufacturing: A bibliometric study. Australian Conference on Robotics and Automation (ACRA) 2022. QUT, Brisbane, December.
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