Automatic Planning of Psychologically Less-Stressful Trajectories in Collaborative Workstations: An Integrated Toolbox for Unskilled Users

Abstract

Collaborative robotics relies on a safe physical interaction between robot and operator. However, even if compliance with safety standards is assured, other kind of dangers like psychological stress can be neglected or improperly considered. It has been proven that working and sharing workspace with robots can be psychologically stressing for the operator. Further, small and medium-sized enterprises inherently lack highly skilled workers in. These two factors are identified as risks to the acceptance and usage of collaborative robots. In order to overcome these issues, we developed, implemented and validated a new toolbox and graphical user interface for collaborative robots to allow unskilled workers to easily and automatically plan psychologically less-stressful trajectories. This method assures smooth movements and maximum allowable speeds. This work introduces the toolbox with collaborative robots of Universal Robots, though is general and applicable to other manufacturers.