Prioritizing Risk Factors for Human-Robot Collaboration Using the Simplified Best-Worst Group Method: Comparing Industry and University Perspectives

4.0 industry systems in general and advanced manufacturing systems such as collaborative robots in particular are known for their high level of complexity, which raises new safety concerns. The most important feature of these concerns is their complexity and multidimensionality. This study aims to prioritize the risk factors in human-robot collaboration introduced in the literature from the perspective of industrialists and academics. Therefore, the use of the simplified best-worst group method (SG-BWM) is on the agenda. From the literature study, five risk factors including occupational safety and health, professional preparation, physical issues, psychological and trust issues, and ethical and legal issues were considered as the most important and comprehensive risk factors in human-robot collaboration. The results showed that the occupational safety and health factor (experts' average weight: 0.305) ranked first, and physical issues and professional preparation (experts' average weight: 0.235 and 0.199) ranked second and third, respectively. In terms of prioritizing risk factors, no difference was observed between the views of academic experts and industry experts. The proposed approach can provide a strong foundation to guide the future development of diverse risk assessment models for collaborative robot environments and facilitate the safe coexistence of humans and robots in the 4.0 industrial era.