Applying Task-Oriented Safety Field Calibration in Human Robot Collaborative Systems

Abstract

Effective and safe human-robot collaboration (HRC) in assembly requires a reasonable proximity between humans and robots. This paper considers an assembly scenario that humans and robots collaborate in a shared workspace, where safety is the most important issue. A dynamic safety field is defined for HRC to ensure safe collaboration and interaction between a human operator and a robot to achieve assembly tasks. The safety field can be adjusted and calibrated based on predicted assembly tasks. Utilizing the dynamically calibrated safety field, the robot movement will be obtained. The dynamic calibration of safety field for robot movement presents an alternative easier way for robot motion planning based on safety sense. Case studies are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed dynamic safety field motion planning method.