Experimental implementation of skeleton tracking for collision avoidance in collaborative robotics

Abstract

Collaborative robotic manipulators can stop in case of a collision, according to the ISO/TS 15066 and ISO 10218-1 standards. However, in a human-robot collaboration scenario where the robot and the human share the workspace, a better solution with concerns to production and operator safety would be to perceive in advance the presence of an obstacle and be able to avoid it, thereby completing the task without halting the robot. In this paper, an obstacle avoidance algorithm is tested using a sensor system for real-time human detection; the operator represents a potential dynamic obstacle that can interfere with the robot motion. The sensor system consists of three RGB-D cameras. A custom software framework has been developed in Python exploiting machine learning tools for human skeleton detection. The coordinates of the human body joints relative to the manipulator base are used as input to the obstacle avoidance algorithm. The use of multiple sensors makes it possible to limit the occlusion problem; in addition, the choice of non-wearable sensors goes in the direction of better operator comfort. A series of experimental tests were performed to verify the accuracy of skeleton detection and the ability of the system to avoid obstacles in real time. The human motion caption system, in particular, was validated through a comparison with a commercial system based on wearable IMU sensors widely used and validated in motion capture. There is an NRMSE of $$3.23\%$$ 3.23 % for the RGB-D camera-based skeleton detection system, against an NRMSE of $$12.23\%$$ 12.23 % for the IMU wearable sensor system. Test results confirm that the system is able to avoid collisions with the human body under various conditions, static or dynamic, ensuring a minimum safety distance to any part of the manipulator. In 44 tests in which the operator moves around the robot with possible collisions (at a speed typical of manufacturing operations), the minimum operator-robot distance averaged $$208\,\textrm{mm}$$ 208 mm , being $$200\,\textrm{mm}$$ 200 mm the limit safety distance set by algorithm.