Survey of methods for design of collaborative robotics applications- Why safety is a barrier to more widespread robotics uptake

Abstract

While collaborative robots have made headlines through recent industrial applications, they are not as widespread in industry as it may seem. The authors of this paper believe that one reason for this slow uptake is due to the high requirements on the safety and the lack of engineering tools for analyzing collaborative robotics applications. Systems engineering provides a good framework for creating the engineering tools needed for faster and more reliable deployment, but has only recently been applied to robotics challenges. In this paper, we discuss the state of the art for designing robotics applications featuring human-robot collaboration (HRC) and then review existing systems engineering approaches, which could offer support. Our review aims to support the robotics community in the future development of engineering tools to better understand, plan, and implement applications featuring collaborative robotics. CCS Concepts • Applied computing➝ Physical sciences and engineering ➝ Engineering➝ Computer-aided design.

Design method of human–industrial robot collaborative workstation with industrial application

“…One of the main challenges of realising HIRC workstations on our factory floors is the lack of methods supporting efficient HIRC workstation design (Pini, Leali, and Ansaloni 2015;Michalos et al 2018;Saenz et al 2018). This requires both a capable design tool that enables virtual simulation and evaluation of HIRC workstation design and a structured process for using the software in an appropriate way.…”

“…One prerequisite for creating these systems is to enable personal safety for the humans collaborating with the industrial robot. Current safety legislation restricts close collaboration between humans and traditional industry robots (Saenz et al 2018). The research activities to solve these limitations include camera systems supervising the collaboration area, tactile sensors on the robot arm or creation of mechanical robot systems with internal compliant behaviour at impact.…”

“…This investigation needs to include many engineering design decisions, from strategy-driven company-specific demands down to task-specific demands on the system. Existing methods and tools to design HIRC workstations have limitations in their capacity to study the whole system (Saenz et al 2018). Thus there is a need to establish systematic engineering design methods supporting the HIRC workstation designers in their task (Pini, Leali, and Ansaloni 2015;Michalos et al 2018).…”

Towards safe human robot collaboration - Risk assessment of intelligent automation

“…Therefore, there is a great interest in introducing automation in the form of collaborative robot systems where collaborative robots could help to relieve the human from the heavier and more laborious tasks and to free up his/her time for more value adding operations [3]. Although despite both industry and research are keen to develop the associated technologies with collaborative robots [4], cobots are underused [5]- [7] and are mostly deployed as traditional robots but without fences [8], mainly for handling tasks. They are not really used for collaboration as a true coworker, intelligent and collaborative, where they can increase both flexibility and quality.…”

On-line collision avoidance for collaborative robot manipulators by adjusting off-line generated paths: An industrial use case

“…The requirements for safe collaborative robots, including physical human-robot interaction (pHRI), are detailed in [9], where collision avoidance is listed as a factor, among others, which is important for human-robot safety. The new standard ISO 10218 and the technical specification TS 15066 define the safety requirements for collaborative robots [26]. Apart from industrial domain and human-robot collaboration, collision avoidance is also being investigated for aerospace applications, including robotic arms mounted on space maneuverable platforms [4] and aerial manipulators mounted on drones [12].…”