Safety aspects in a human-robot interaction scenario: A human worker is co-operating with an industrial robot

Abstract

This paper presents a concept of a smart working environment designed to allow true joint actions of humans and industrial robots. The proposed system perceives its environment with multiple sensor modalities and acts in it with an industrial robot manipulator to assemble workpieces in combination with a human worker. In combination with the reactive behavior of the robot, safe collaboration between the human and the robot is possible. Generally, the application scenario is situated in a factory, where a human worker is supported by a robot to accomplish a given hybrid assembly scenario, that covers manual and automated assembly steps. For an effective human-robot collaboration, new safety methods have to be developed and proven. Human workers as well as objects in the environment have to be detected and a collision avoidance algorithm has to ensure the safety for persons and equipment. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.