Although the concept of industrial cobots dates back to 1999, most present day hybrid human-machine assembly systems are merely weight compensators. Here, we present results on the development of a collaborative human-robot manufacturing cell for homokinetic joint assembly. The robot alternates active and passive behaviours during assembly, to lighten the burden on the operator in the first case, and to comply to his/her needs in the latter. Our approach can successfully manage direct physical contact between robot and human, and between robot and environment. Furthermore, it can be applied to standard position (and not torque) controlled robots, common in the industry. The approach is validated in a series of assembly experiments. The human workload is reduced, diminishing the risk of strain injuries. Besides, a complete risk analysis indicates that the proposed setup is compatible with the safety standards, and could be certified.

Deforming a cable to a desired (reachable) shape is a trivial task for a human to do without even knowing the internal dynamics of the cable. This paper proposes a framework for cable shapes manipulation with multiple robot manipulators. The shape is parameterized by a Fourier series. A local deformation model of the cable is estimated on-line with the shape parameters. Using the deformation model, a velocity control law is applied on the robot to deform the cable into the desired shape. Experiments on a dual-arm manipulator are conducted to validate the framework.

Abstract-In this paper, we propose a control scheme that allows a humanoid robot to perform a transportation task jointly with a human partner. From the study of how human dyads achieve such a task, we have developed a control law for physical interaction that unifies standalone and collaborative (leader and follower) modes for trajectory-based tasks. We present it in the case of a linear impedance controller but it can be generalized to more complex impedances. Desired trajectories are decomposed into sequences of elementary motion primitives. We implemented this model with a Finite State Machine associated with a reactive pattern generator. First experiments conducted on a real HRP-2 humanoid robot assess the overall approach.