Inclusion of Workers with Functional Diversity in Human-Robot Collaboration: A Systematic Mapping Review

Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) has been promoted as a pillar of human-centric manufacturing. However, workers with disabilities, impairments, or functional limitations remain underrepresented in industrial HRC research and deployment. Existing studies rarely examine how human functional diversity (FD) systematically affects different collaboration layers, nor how inclusion-oriented solutions are distributed across them. To bridge this gap, this study conducts a systematic mapping review of research addressing human FD in industrial HRC. Building on a layered HRC model and a universalist view of FD, we mapped cognitive, sensorial-perceptual, and motor-physical diversity dimensions across the main HRC collaboration layers, i.e., physical interaction, perceptual access, cognitive coordination, and execution/communication. The results highlight a strong concentration of research in motor-physical diversity at the physical interaction and execution/communication layers. In contrast, sensorial-perceptual diversity is under-investigated, as well as cognitive coordination mechanisms are scarcely integrated across collaboration layers. Moreover, inclusion and accessibility solutions proved to be typically dimension-specific and concentrated within the HRC layers. Such results are intended to support inclusive-by-design HRC systems and to outline directions for future research toward systematically inclusive and sustainable manufacturing.