Safety Requirements in Collaborative Human–Robot Cyber-Physical System

Abstract

The paper identifies the basic technology and functional requirements of a cyber-physical system to control human–robot collaboration in an industrial environment. The paper defines the collaboration grading of human–robot co-working environment based on the prevailing safety concepts in workspace sharing. Detailed requirements are generated for each interaction mode and few collaboration indices are established. Different indices are found to be useful for the purpose of categorization of collaboration levels. A specific case is discussed later for a detailed Cyber-Physical System solution in a smart production or logistical context. The paper ends with a general guideline that is formulated to cater for various industrial level human–robot collaborative scenarios. An important aspect of the collaboration guideline is a sensor catalogue to meet cyber-physical system design requirements.