A Practical and Effective Layout for a Safe Human-Robot Collaborative Assembly Task

This work describes a layout to carry out a demonstrative assembly task, during which a collaborative robot performs pick-and-place tasks to supply an operator the parts that he/she has to assemble. In this scenario, the robot and operator share the workspace and a real time collision avoidance algorithm is implemented to modify the planned trajectories of the robot avoiding any collision with the human worker. The movements of the operator are tracked by two Microsoft Kinect v2 sensors to overcome problems related with occlusions and poor perception of a single camera. The data obtained by the two Kinect sensors are combined and then given as input to the collision avoidance algorithm. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the collision avoidance algorithm and the significant gain in terms of task times that the highest level of human-robot collaboration can bring.

Automated summary

This work describes a layout for a collaborative robot and human demonstrative assembly task, where a real time collision avoidance algorithm is implemented to prevent collisions between the robot and the human worker. The operator's movements are tracked by two sensors, and the experimental results show the effectiveness of the collision avoidance algorithm and the significant time gains from human-robot collaboration at a high level.