Towards the Robotic Co-Worker

The realization of a sensor based robotic co-worker that brings robots closer to humans in industrial settings and achieve close cooperation is an important goal in robotics. In this paper a solid concept and a prototype realization of a co-worker scenario are developed in order to demonstrate that state-of-the-art technology is now mature enough to reach this aspiring aim. We support our ideas by addressing the industrially relevant bin-picking problem with the DLR Lightweight Robot (LWR-III), which is equipped with a Time-of-Flight camera for object recognition and the DLR 3D-Modeller for generating accurate environment models. Strategies are devised for safe interaction with the human during task execution, state depending robot behavior, and the appropriate mechanisms, to realize robustness in partially unstructured environments.