Collection and Analysis of Human Upper Limbs Motion Features for Collaborative Robotic Applications

Abstract

(1) Background: The technologies of Industry 4.0 are increasingly promoting an operation of human motion prediction for improvement of the collaboration between workers and robots. The purposes of this study were to fuse the spatial and inertial data of human upper limbs for typical industrial pick and place movements and to analyze the collected features from the future perspective of collaborative robotic applications and human motion prediction algorithms. (2) Methods: Inertial Measurement Units and a stereophotogrammetric system were adopted to track the upper body motion of 10 healthy young subjects performing pick and place operations at three different heights. From the obtained database, 10 features were selected and used to distinguish among pick and place gestures at different heights. Classification performances were evaluated by estimating confusion matrices and F1-scores. (3) Results: Values on matrices diagonals were definitely greater than those in other positions. Furthermore, F1-scores were very high in most cases. (4) Conclusions: Upper arm longitudinal acceleration and markers coordinates of wrists and elbows could be considered representative features of pick and place gestures at different heights, and they are consequently suitable for the definition of a human motion prediction algorithm to be adopted in effective collaborative robotics industrial applications.

Dominants and Features of Growth of the World Market of Robotics

“…Certain changes in the list of leaders are possible in the event of the movement of production facilities abroad, but it is unlikely that this will affect the total volume of investments in robotics. At the same time, the cumulative number of installed robotics devices during the existence of companies was estimated based on data as of mid-2020 (Digo, et al, 2020). The presented graph demonstrates that the leadership in the industrial robotics market belongs mainly to companies from Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States.…”

Human-Robot Perception in Industrial Environments: A Survey

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Analysis of the Impact of Human–Cobot Collaborative Manufacturing Implementation on the Occupational Health and Safety and the Quality Requirements

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