Robotics in Human Centric Digital Twins and Industry 5.0

Industry 5.0 marks a shift from purely automation driven manufacturing toward human-centric, resilient, and intelligent production systems. In this paradigm, humans and robots work as complementary partners rather than isolated entities. Advances in human robot collaboration, responsive robotics, and AI in manufacturing enable production systems that dynamically adapt to human behaviour, environmental changes, and product variability. Central to this evolution are human digital twins, which model physical, cognitive, and ergonomic aspects of workers, and human intention prediction, allowing robots to anticipate actions and respond proactively. At the system level, responsive manufacturing supports rapid reconfiguration and mass personalization. Emerging approaches such as prompt engineering in manufacturing further bridge human intent and machine intelligence by enabling intuitive, natural-language interaction with robots and digital twins. Together, these technologies form the foundation for safe, adaptive, and efficient human robot coworking environments aligned with Industry 5.0 principles.Despite significant advances in automation and artificial intelligence, current manufacturing systems still struggle to achieve seamless, intuitive, and truly adaptive human robot collaboration. Robots often react to pre-programmed instructions or delayed sensor inputs, limiting their ability to understand human intent, adapt to individual workers, or respond effectively to dynamic shop-floor conditions. This gap reduces flexibility, increases cognitive and physical workload for operators, and constrains the realization of Industry 5.0's human-centric vision.The goal of this Research Topic is to collect use cases in responsive manufacturing systems that integrate human digital twins, human intention prediction, and AI-driven decision-making to enable proactive and human robot coworking. Recent advances in multimodal sensing, machine learning, and large language models offer new opportunities to model human behaviour in real time and translate high level human intent into adaptive robotic actions through prompt-based interfaces. By combining these technologies with safety-aware control and digital twin frameworks, manufacturing systems can become more resilient, flexible, and aligned with human capabilities and needs.This Research Topic focuses on human-centric, AI enabled manufacturing systems aligned with the principles of Industry 5.0. Contributions are invited that address theoretical foundations, enabling technologies, and practical implementations of human robot collaboration and coworking in responsive manufacturing environments. Relevant themes include, but are not limited to: • human digital twins for skill, ergonomics, and cognitive modelling; • human intention prediction using multimodal sensing; responsive and adaptive robotics; • AI and machine learning methods for manufacturing intelligence; • prompt engineering and natural language interfaces for industrial systems; • safety, trust, and ethical aspects of human robot interaction in Industry 5.0; • integration of digital twins with robotic and manufacturing execution systems;• novel architectures for human centric digital twin application in Industry 5.0The Research Topic welcomes original research articles, review papers, methodological contributions, and industrial case studies that demonstrate advances in theory, algorithms, system architectures, or real-world deployment, bridging academic research and industrial practice. Topic editors: Azfar Khalid, Waqar S. Qureshi, Tariq Masood, Waqas Lughmani, Reza Vatankhah Barenji Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/77179/robotics-in-human-centric-digital-twins-and-industry-50