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Industrial wearable system: the human-centric empowering technology in Industry 4.0

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Abstract

The Industry 4.0 program and corresponding international initiatives continue to transform the industrial workforce and their work. The service-oriented, customer-centric and demand-driven production is pushing forward the progress of industrial automation. Even though, it does not mean that human can be fully replaced by machines/robots. There is an increasing awareness that human presence is not only one type of manufacturing capability, but also contributes to the overall system’s fault tolerant. How to achieve the seamless integration between human and machines/robots and harness human’s full potential is a critical issue for the success of Industry 4.0. In this research, a human-centric empowering technology: industrial wearable system is proposed. The aim of this system is to establish a human–cyber–physical symbiosis to support real time, trusting, and dynamic interaction among operators, machines and production systems. In order to design a substantial framework, three world-leading R&D groups in this field are investigated. Five design considerations have been identified from real-life pilot projects. The future trends and research opportunities also show great promise of industrial wearable system in the next generation of manufacturing.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by Zhejiang Provincial, Hangzhou Municipal, Lin’an City governments, ITF Innovation and Technology Support Programme of Hong Kong Government (ITP/079/16LP), HKSAR RGC GRF (No. 17212016; No. 17203117) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71671116; No. 71701079).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Transportation Economy and Logistics Management, College of Economics, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

    Xiang T. R. Kong, Hao Luo & Xuan Yang

  2. HKU-ZIRI Lab for Physical Internet, Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong

    Xiang T. R. Kong & George Q. Huang

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  1. Xiang T. R. Kong
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  2. Hao Luo
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  3. George Q. Huang
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Correspondence to Hao Luo.

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Kong, X.T.R., Luo, H., Huang, G.Q. et al. Industrial wearable system: the human-centric empowering technology in Industry 4.0. J Intell Manuf 30, 2853–2869 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-018-1416-9

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