Dear Colleagues,

Robotic systems are intelligent systems that carry out five main functions, namely (1) power generation, (2) control/management, (3) actuation, (4) body, (5) sensing. These functions can be intelligent, depending on the physical units developed for them. A robotic system may comprise a single robot or a group of robots. For a group of robots, the intelligence levels of these five main functions are expressed in terms of aggregation and emergency. Furthermore, robots may have different levels of intelligence. There is an application scenario in which robots and humans work together. This Special Issue considers this scenario, which involves the introduction of human collaborative robotic systems.

The key issues with human collaborative robotic systems are communication and cooperation between humans and robots for reliable, robust, and resilient operation. More specifically, they are (i) how a robot is able to determine a human operator’s physical and mental state, (ii) how a robot operates together with a human operator to accomplish a common goal while guaranteeing a high degree of safety and health to the human operator, and (iii) how a group reforms, readjusts, or changes in order to ensure its suitability and resilience.

This Special Issue seeks papers that address the aforementioned issues as well as related issues, e.g., how a mechatronic system can detect an accident or crash involving humans or how a mechatronic system can devise an optimal plan to change its cooperative behavior. It should be noted that the scope is not restricted to one human operator and one mechatronic system only but a group of them, perhaps in the physical–cybernetic setting.

Prof. Dr. Wenjun (Chris) Zhang
Prof. Dr. Zhuming Bi
Guest Editors

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