An image based algorithm to safely locate human extremities for human-robot collaboration

Abstract

For safe human-robot collaboration a technologically diverse and redundant sensor system is developed which comprises ultrasound sensors and two monocular camera systems. The sensor system recognizes human extremities in the collaboration area in which robot and human shall work together interactively. The robot controller calculates the shortest distance between the robot and a human operator. With the fused sensor data the controller determines how to adapt the robot behavior to avoid undesired physical contact with the human operator. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.