Dear Colleagues,

The Issue aims to disseminate challenging research dealing with design methods, technologies, and systems for a collaborative factory enhanced by Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 principles. Interconnected technologies aiming to improve factory efficiency and productivity—supported by Industry 4.0 pillars—have to be enriched by a deeper system humanization and a renewed usage of resources. In such a vision, humans and machine must be highly interconnected to accomplish the future enlarging customization of manufacturing processes and the wider use of optimized robotized processes.

Mobile and fixed robotic collaborative systems, quality and machinery monitoring systems for operator assistance, and autonomous guided vehicles interacting with operators are essential tools to conceive, prototype, and implement integrated collaborative workplaces for a smart factory. New methodologies can support the design and development of collaborative workplaces by adopting mathematical modeling and virtual simulation to boost and optimize verification and validation steps of designing processes.

• Design methods and models for a new collaborative factory
• Methodologies for the design and development of collaborative workplaces
• Enhanced efficient integration of robotic collaboration
• Active and smart logistics with autonomous guided vehicles for collaborative operations
• Collaborative quality control for product/process optimization and predictive maintenance
• Planning and control paradigms for collaborative robots
• Mechatronic design of collaborative robots
• Human–machine interfaces for the collaborative factory

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2021

Prof. Dr. Stanislao Patalano
Prof. Dr. Antonio Lanzotti
Prof. Dr. Bruno Siciliano
Prof. Dr. Luigi Villani

Guest Editors

More info: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci/special_issues/Integrated_Collaborative_Systems