Legible light communications for factory robots

Abstract

This work focuses on methods to improve mobile robot legibility in factories using lights. Implementation and evaluation were done at a robotics company that manufactures factory robots that work in human spaces. Three new sets of communicative lights were created and tested on the robots, integrated into the company's software stack and compared to the industry default lights that currently exist on the robots. All three newly designed light sets outperformed the industry default. Insights from this work have been integrated into software releases across North America.