Human-Aware Robotic Assistant for Collaborative Assembly: Integrating Human Motion Prediction With Planning in Time
Author(s)
Unhelkar, Vaibhav V.; Lasota, Przemyslaw A.; Tyroller, Quirin; Buhai, Rares-Darius; Marceau, Laurie; Deml, Barbara; Shah, Julie A.; ... Show more Show less
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Introducing mobile robots into the collaborative assembly process poses unique challenges for ensuring efficient and safe human-robot interaction. Current human-robot work cells require the robot to cease operating completely whenever a human enters a shared region of the given cell, and the robots do not explicitly model or adapt to the behavior of the human. In this work, we present a human-aware robotic system with single-axis mobility that incorporates both predictions of human motion and planning in time to execute efficient and safe motions during automotive final assembly. We evaluate our system in simulation against three alternative methods, including a baseline approach emulating the behavior of standard safety systems in factories today. We also assess the system within a factory test environment. Through both live demonstration and results from simulated experiments, we show that our approach produces statistically significant improvements in quantitative measures of safety and fluency of interaction. Keywords: Physical Human-Robot Interaction, Collaborative Robots, Assembly
Date issued
2018-03Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer ScienceJournal
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Citation
Unhelkar, Vaibhav V. et al. "Human-Aware Robotic Assistant for Collaborative Assembly: Integrating Human Motion Prediction With Planning in Time." IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 3, 3 (July 2018): 2394-2401 © 2016 IEEE
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
2377-3766
2377-3774