A core predicate of Industry 5.0 (I5.0) is the integration of human, environmental and social factors with new technologies. The integration of collaborative robots offers increased productivity but raises questions on safety and how robots can respond to varying cognitive and physical attributes. This paper discusses the significance of structured ontologies in managing complex information for proactive, safe, and productive human-robot collaboration. The paper highlights the future work to be undertaken to ensure the safe and fluid integration of humans and robots within I5.0.

In this paper, motion synchronization is investigated for human–robot collaboration such that the robot is able to “actively” follow its human partner. Force tracking is achieved with the proposed method under the impedance control framework, subject to uncertain human limb dynamics. Adaptive control is developed to deal with point-to-point movement, and learning control and neural networks control are developed to generate periodic and arbitrary continuous trajectories, respectively. Stability and tracking performance of the closed-loop system are discussed through rigorous analysis. The validity of the proposed method is verified through simulation and experiment studies.